Renaissance Palace

Renaissance Palace is located in the ancient center and dominates with its grandeur, the underlying construction. It was built in the sixteenth century. by Marchesi Cosentino, lords of Aieta from 1577. The building passed in 1571 and was sold to the Cosentino Scalea Spinelli in 1767. In 1913 he was declared a national monument, and later became the property of the Municipality of Aieta in 1980. 

At the center of the facade the portico with columns and gray local stone arches surrounded by carved balconies and windows with jambs and frames made with the same stone. The set, of great historical and architectural interest to have the system grandeur and the grandeur of its architecture, is one of the few examples of civil buildings of the ‘500 in Calabria. 

The building consists of three floors: the basement, with thick structures (external perimeter walls well measured 1.75 m. And those of compartment 0.55 m.), On the ground floor and the first floor, high respectively 6 and 5 m. The building has a “U plan”. On the ground floor there was the guard, supervisory and waiting rooms, the chapel, the office of the Marquis, the reception room, the lounges, music and gaming, kitchens, pantries and the hall of arms. The basement housed the prisons, cellars, water tanks, and were lit by nine windows fitted with massive iron bars: it was accessed from the inside using the stairs. The first floor housed all the bedrooms. The service towers and surveillance were two, to the east: the first was equipped for the defense; the second, which had a square, housed the kitchens and other services. There was also a dovecote, facing north-east, where pigeons are useful for communications were bred. 

Today the Palace houses the Virtual Museum of Aieta where visitors can take a dip into the past through a virtual reconstruction of the environments and the original rooms of the palace.