Description
The Rotonda Pancera is a neoclassical palazzo in Trieste with a façade curved like a round temple, bent around the sharp corner of a wedge-shaped plot at the edge of the old town. It is attributed to Matteo Pertsch, the architect who left the deepest mark on early-19th-century Trieste.
The thing to look at is the façade: giant columns with Ionic capitals carry a heavy cornice, three French windows with balustrades open between the columns, and up above run high reliefs with Roman and Greek scenes: Coriolanus, Lucretia, the sacrifice of Iphigenia. At the sides, between the last columns and the walls, two statues close the rhythm.
It dates from around 1805, the years of Palazzo Carciotti, with which it has much in common. Beneath the building there are also historic underground spaces, among those studied by Trieste's urban speleologists.
The thing to look at is the façade: giant columns with Ionic capitals carry a heavy cornice, three French windows with balustrades open between the columns, and up above run high reliefs with Roman and Greek scenes: Coriolanus, Lucretia, the sacrifice of Iphigenia. At the sides, between the last columns and the walls, two statues close the rhythm.
It dates from around 1805, the years of Palazzo Carciotti, with which it has much in common. Beneath the building there are also historic underground spaces, among those studied by Trieste's urban speleologists.