Palazzo Lantieri is located at number 6 of Piazza Sant'Antonio in Gorizia; built around 1350, near the eastern gate of the city, it defended the entrance itself. The palace was the guest house of the Counts of Gorizia, in which the guests who participated in hunting parties and chivalrous tournaments stayed.
Palazzo Lantieri History
In the fourteenth century there was a villa near the city walls of the counts of Gorizia called Schoenhaus. This guesthouse often hosted guests on hunting trips. Today we still find a testimony of the walls in the tower that is located in the courtyard of the building. This was the eastern gate of the city. There are also traces of the ancient moat near the walls, where the torrent Vertoibizza had been diverted.
On the death of Leonardo, the last count of Gorizia, in 1499, the property passed to his personal physician Antonio Pozzo, who ceded it to Antonio Lantieri di Paratico with a contract stipulated on October 21st 1505. The new owners later extended the building , completing the ancient wing during 1524. The large wing, called the 16th century, was completed in the second half of the century and subsequently other buildings were added.
The importance of the family grew, becoming the actual heir of the county and having considerable prestige in the court. He also had his own body of cuirassiers who distinguished himself in the war against the Turks, led by General Federico Lantieri, under the orders of Eugene of Savoy.
In 1728 Palazzo Lantieri hosted Carlo Goldoni and his father, personal physician of Count Francesco Antonio Lantieri, Lieutenant General of the Emperor's Armies. Here also Maria Theresa of Austria stayed in 1782 and, also in the same year, Pio VI returned from Vienna.
In the nineteenth century the thick grating of the windows overlooking the square was removed, to obtain greater brightness. The First World War caused several damage, which was remedied only after World War II, thanks to the intervention of the owners Levetzow-Lantieri.
You can admire a beautiful decorated loggia of the seventeenth century, overlooking the street, and the coats of arms of the Lantieri family and Lamberg. Inside, in the ancient hall, there are frescoes attributed to Marcello Fogolino (around 1540) and commissioned by Gaspare Lantieri, who was of Lutheran faith. They were discovered in 1910 and have recently been restored. There have been reservations about the authorship of the entire work, which according to some is from different eras.
Then we find grotesque figures, in the "Sala della Cabala", recovered from a restoration of 1912 and dated between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
The garden, called Parco della Persiana, has remained intact in its Persian design from the 16th century: embellished with rose gardens, it extends over a central avenue from which side avenues branch off, then enters a laurel grove and ends in a final opening where an Omega-shaped hedge was created.