Visit

Ground floor - Enter the Main Courtyard with its truly enchanting architecture and decorations. Then make your way to the first floor, look out of the loggia and continue your visit of the main floor.

Main Courtyard

The loggias were a later addition to the original core of the buildings, refining the space of the irregularly shaped courtyard. The diverse and consistently daring nature of the solutions, chosen for the corner structures of the arcades, reveals the various stages of construction, started in 1443.

Loggias

The main courtyard would have been very different in the 15th century, with bright colours and elegant decorations. The large loggia on the ground floor is still adorned with beautiful painted patterns, while the galleries upstairs feature elegant tondi (circular paintings) containing Giovanni Romei's crest: a rampant hound surrounded by creeping vines and fluttering ribbons.

Piano nobile - It houses sculptures, decorations and frescoes by great masters. Around the middle of the 15th century cardinal Ippolito II d'Este chose it as his home and he commissioned the modernization of the rooms with extraordinary grotesques.

First Room

The hall that marks the beginning of the visit to the noble floor has a beautiful wooden paneled ceiling and a frescoed band. It displays precious artistic fragments of detached frescoes from churches in of Ferrara dating from the 14th to the 15th century.

Second Room

Alfonso Lombardi was born in Ferrara in c. 1497. He was a renowned sculptor and medalist who moved to Bologna as a young man and later worked in Rome, under the protection of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. He died prematurely in Bologna in 1537. Demonstrating his celebrity at the time, Giorgio Vasari dedicated an entire chapter of his The Lives to his life and work. Casa Romei houses two important sculptures attributed to him: St Nicholas of Tolentine, displayed in this room, and a terracotta tile with the Deposition of Christ.

Room of Tobias and the Angel

The name of this room comes from the biblical episode frescoed in the centre of the vaulted ceiling. It depicts the young Tobias setting out on a journey, guided by the Archangel Raphael. The frescoed central panel is attributed to the painter from Ferrara Sebastiano Filippi, known as Il Bastianino (c. 1532 - 1602). The brightly coloured and rich grotesques, typical of the 16th century, are attributed to Filippi's workshop.

Chapel

In this tiny room, the white walls are marked by terracotta tiles, round arches and pilasters also in terracotta. It is completed by the lively white and pink floor in Verona marble.

Room of David and Golia

The biblical scene of David and Goliath is represented in the central panel of the pavilion vault. The fresco is attributed to Ferrara painter Sebastiano Filippi, also known as Il Bastianino (1532 c. - 1602); the vivacious grotesques in the walls are also generally attributed to the Filippi workshop. The frieze is divided into two. In the upper band there are winged female figures playing two trumpets, alternated with suspended ribbons. In the lower band we can see the classic repertoire of Renaissance grotesques with festoons and precious stones.

Main Hall

This spacious room is as wide as the major loggia in the courtyard. Here, the virtuous and fanciful grotesques of the Renaissance are given full play under the beautiful wooden ceiling, which dates back to the 15th century. The vast repertoire of fantastical paintings are attributed to the Filippi workshop (Camillo and his most famous son Sebastiano, known as il Bastianino), though it is probable that after 1570 the workshop of Ludovico Settevecchi, who had been working for the Camera Ducale Estense (the Court’s office dedicated to the economic and tax administration and practices) also worked on the decorations of this room.

Room of the Monkey

The frescoed band that decorates the room presents paintings typical of the rich repertoire of 16th century grotesques, though the decoration seems to date to the beginning of the 17th century. Meticulously painted images of parrots, pheasants, lapwings, hawks and turkeys enrich the painting, and seem to come from an ancient bestiary. Lion-men, tiger-men, panther-men in the act of fighting are represented near the animals. The frescoed band with multi-coloured frieze runs around the walls of the room, not interrupted by the terracotta fireplace hood that dates back to the 16th century; at the top of the hood an amusing little monkey is painted.

Green Room

This room, probably once used as a bedroom, houses a splendid polychrome stucco Madonna, attributed to Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (Florence, 1386 - 1466), better known as Donatello and his workshop. This piece in Casa Romei is the only example of the Florentine artist's work in Ferrara and features alongside a beautiful selection of sculptures, dating from the 14th to the 18th century.

Alcove

This intimate little room has for a long time been considered Giovanni Romei's private office. It has a coffered ceiling decorated with sophisticated woodcut prints on paper with a green background. Each square panel features four female heads surrounded by leaves, grouped around a rosette in the centre.

Once you reach the Alcove, make your way back through the loggias and down the stairs to continue your visit.

Lapidarium

In 1735 the Marquis Ercole Bevilacqua gathered sculptures and marbles from destroyed churches and other finds from the territory in the courtyard of the university building (Palazzo Paradiso, which now houses Ferrara’s library - Biblioteca Ariostea). It was a composite collection with archaeological, medieval and Renaissance marbles and tombstones. The lapidary section of the new Civic Museum could not find a suitable location; for this reason some pieces were placed in the courtyard of Palazzo Paradiso, while others were deposited in local warehouses and others made their way to the Certosa and then from there to the Palazzo dei Diamanti.

16th Century Room

This squared hall features an elegant stone fireplace and an exquisite wooden ceiling that is covered in painted paper, both dating from XVI century. The blue and gold ornament of the ceiling reveals in some point, former red decorations from 16th century.

Room of the Sibyls

Overlooking the unassuming smaller courtyard, this room is tipycal of the Middle Ages. It is dominated by its large fireplace with polygonal hood, decorated with frescos and a terracotta frieze in the Gothic style - the only example of its kind remaining in Ferrara. The family crest with a rampant hound above a shield, flanked by the initials of Giovanni Romei (ÇR, Çoanne Romio), stands out in the centre of the hood. The wall decorations were probably painted when Giovanni Romei married Polissena d'Este. The composition is dominated by the slemn rapresentation of the twelve Sibyls (or prophetesses) standing in front of the garden with a cane trellis.

Room of the Prophets

The haloed heads of the Prophets emerge from the foliage of four different trees within a garden surrounded by red rose bushes. Next to the tree, on the best preserved wall, we can observe a monumental female figure in a green dress in the act of praying. This smaller room originally housed a fireplace at the centre of its external wall.