Palazzo della Cancelleria

Built between 1485 and 1513, perhaps by Leon Battista Alberti, it was commissioned by Cardinal Raffaele Riario and it represents a prime example of the second generation of renaissance architecture in Rome, successive to the model of Palazzo Venezia, though sharing its closed structure and the incorporation of a church within (San Lorenzo in Damaso). It became seat to the Cancelleria Apostolica at the start of the 1500s, when it was confiscated from Cardinal Riario, and it serves the same purpose today. In 1798, it served as home to the Tribunal of the Republic, the Imperial Court (1810) and roman Parliament (1848).

THINGS TO KNOW: It was inside this building on 9 February 1849, that Rome was declared a republic. It lasted only five months (untl July 4), but attained unversal suffrage for men, the abolition of the death penalty and freedom of religion.