POMELLO CHINAGLIA PALACE

Palazzo Pomello Chinaglia, one of the oldest buildings in Montagnana, has a fourteenth-century layout but is currently covered in fake ashlar stucco and stone portals from the early sixteenth century. The will of Jacopa da Leonessa, wife of the leader Erasmo da Narni known as Gattamelata, was dictated in her permanent residence located in a palace overlooking the square of Montagnana. Some architectural elements, the age of the building and the coat of arms frescoed on the top facade (depicting a rampant feline) lead us to believe that it could be Palazzo Pomello Chinaglia. Perhaps the Pisan nobles also lived here, as the imposing stone coat of arms visible on the central portal suggests. The Palace is still looked after today by the Pomello Chinaglia family whose illustrious ancestor, Sen. Luigi Chinaglia (born in Montagnana in 1841), took part alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi in the campaign of the Thousand. Once the struggles for the liberation of the Veneto and the unification of Italy concluded, he returned to Montagnana where he began his political career first as a city councilor, then in 1868 as a provincial councilor, arriving in Parliament in 1874, where he sat for over 30 years. A regular visitor to parliamentary proceedings, he stood out for his ideas in favor of female education. Chinaglia was vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies from 1895 to 1899, was elected President of the same in 1899, and was then Senator of the Kingdom until 1906, the year of his death in Montagnana. A marble bust of him with a commemorative plaque is kept under the loggia of the Town Hall.