Palazzo del Comune e Loggia della Repubblica, Noli historical timeline

The republic came first and the building second. The Republic of Noli was constituted on 7 August 1192, separating from the Del Carretto marquisate of Finale; the Palazzo del Comune dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, by which time the state was two hundred years old.

It housed a real government. The palazzo was the seat of the consuls and of the government of the republic — headed by a Podestà, deliberating through a Consiglio dei Consoli e dei Capi di casa, holding possessions that included Spotorno, Orco Feglino, Mallare, Vado and the island of Bergeggi.

The loggia went up alongside it. The Loggia della Repubblica Nolese dates to the same period, and the bugnato capital of its column is typical of the end of the Trecento and the start of the Quattrocento.

Three visitors were recorded under it. Plaques attest the passage of Dante Alighieri, who cites Noli in the Purgatorio; Cristoforo Colombo, on 31 May 1476, leaving for Portugal; and Giordano Bruno, in 1576.

In 1643 Genoa intervened a few doors away. The doge Giovanni Battista Lercari sent the senator Antonio Viale to end a conspiracy among some inhabitants that would have delivered Noli to the Duke of Savoy; the palace Viale built around the torre della Marina still stands.

On 2 December 1797 the government here stopped. Napoleon's Italian campaign ended the republic after 605 years.

And then the building was altered. The palazzo underwent various transformations between 1797 and 1820. A council chamber with no council to hold is repurposed quickly.

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