Palazzo della Filanda

The history of the Palazzo della Filanda begins in 1758 when the General Council of Nobles decides to donate to the Antonelli family whose members had given so much to obtain from Pope Benedict XIV the authorization to expand the city, the area on which to build your own building.

However, after about half a century, not having been laid a single brick, in the year 1805 the municipal magistracy asks the card. Leonardo and to the count Bernardino, the restitution of the land that is given to Vincenzo Micciarelli di Jesi, who had undertaken to build it, on a project by the architect Pietro Ghinelli, the magnificent, imposing island palace supported on its four sides by white stone porticoes of Istria equal to those built along the canal. The works began immediately after the fair of 1805 but due to an unforeseen serious financial disturbance suffered by Micciarelli, the work lasted for almost thirty years until, in the impossibility of completing the work, the Micciarelli, was forced to sell it to Count Lovatti of Rome, who in a short time completed the building.

It is curious to recall that the Municipality in August 1818 to promote the end of the works a big lottery to collect the necessary funds but “is postponed for lack of actions” without then made more.

To testify the majesty of the building, it is sufficient to recall how in 1829 to avoid that in that year the city, and in particular its famous fair, would be deprived of the usual opera performances if the new theatre that the Community was building in place of the old condominium used until the previous year had not been ready, the Civic Administration immediately had built in the courtyard of the Micciarelli palace a wooden theater that had three orders of boxes with 21 boxes for each order, loggia, platea, atrium, dressing rooms and everything that could be needed to give opera performances and dance, which regularly entered into operation and worked until the following year when the new theater was opened.

Then the palace changes hands. It is taken over by Corrado Hoza and turned into a silk mill. The activity lasted from 1867 to 1930, the year of the earthquake.