Palazzo Salimbeni, Palazzo Previdi, Piazza della liberazione and Palazzo Sertorio

Palazzo Salimbeni

The Town Hall resides in a part of the ancient abbatial palace bought by the Salimbeni family and today called Palazzo Salimbeni,. From the nineeenth century wrought iron gate we arrive at the steps of the wide stairway with the beautiful balustrade and we go to the first floor whose halls have frescoed ceilings with fruit and venison, Marble busts and a great chimney.

Palazzo Salimbeni around '900

Palazzo Previdi

At n. 59 in via Roma ( once called via Mestra del Castello) there’s a palace in Neo-Classical style, once the property of the lawyer Stanislao Previdi, who has a lunette with the meeting between Dnte and Cciaguida in the presence of Beatrice and the inscription: ” E quindi il soprannome tuo si feo ” ( ” And therefore your last name was made”). This referts to the supposed origin from Nonantola of the Aldighieri family, because members from the family, who were jurists and lawyers, are mentioned in the documents of the XII century preserved in the monastery. According to Tiraboschi, the family actually moved from Nonantola to Ferrara, where one of the women married Ccciaguida and bequeathed her last name to the family whose descendant was the grat poet. Besides the presence of a foutheenth century fragment from the Divine Comedy in Nonantola, nothing else lends credibility to the existence of some kind of bond between the town Dante Alighieri.

Piazza della liberazione and Palazzo Sertorio

Among the most charming piazzas of the old town of Nonantola Piazza della Liberazione should be rembered because it has preserved its Medieval structure, with the houses facing the porticoes, on the South and west sides. On the South side there’s the Palace of the Sertorio Couts, wihich includes within its walls one of the old Medieval, defensive Towers. Inside, a wide staircase leads to greats halls, some with pendentive ceilings. To the North of Piazza della Liberazione the oratory, dedicated to Saint Ronch, is easily recongnizable. It was built by the Sertorio family in the seventhhenth century and now it is a private house. Inside a red Marble tablet remembers these historical events.

The Perla Verde municipal garden in the 1950s. The name of the garden derives from the stage consisting of a painted brick shell built after the war

Villa Emma

Villa Emma is the place which hosted the Jewish children saved from the Nazi concentration camps. It was built by the Sacerdoti family, orinùginally Jewish, between 1890 and 1987, according to the project designed by the architect Vincenzo Maestri. It looks like a typical country mansion with architectural elements borrowed from the Neoclassical style. The northern side is the most interesting part of the whole project, charecterized by a slim, elegant loggia with three arches and octagonal columns, crowned by decorated capitals which support the little balcony. The halls inside, now restored to their original splendour, are enlivened by frescoes in the vaulted ceiling: a medley of flowers, fruit, allegorical figures which, in the great hall, decorates the walls as well.