Palazzo Bonacossi

The Palazzo Bonacossi is a Renaissance palace located at Via Cisterna del Follo 5 in Ferrara, Italy. Built in the late 15th century, it now serves as the home of the Musei Civici di Arte Antica and the Museo Riminaldi, housing administrative offices, an art and photography library, and important collections of sculpture, tapestries, and mosaics. The palace matters as a key monument of Ferrarese Renaissance architecture and as a civic museum hub that preserves the legacy of Cardinal Giovanni Maria Riminaldi, who created the city's first public museum collection.

The palace hosts the Museo Riminaldi, which displays sculptures, tapestries, and mosaics from the 17th and 18th centuries. These works derive primarily from the collections of Cardinal Gian Maria Riminaldi (1718-1789), to whom the city owes its first public museum assembly. The palace also contains an art and photography library serving the museum's research functions. While the Riminaldi collection was once displayed at Palazzo Bonacossi, it is now exhibited in the museum itinerary at Palazzo Schifanoia, though the palace continues to host temporary exhibitions and cultural events.

The cardinal's collection itself constitutes the notable holding associated with the palace. Riminaldi's assemblage of 17th and 18th-century sculptures, tapestries, and mosaics represented the first public museum collection in Ferrara. During recent restoration, four rooms yielded an important architectural discovery: beneath their Baroque-decorated ceilings, 16th-century wooden coffered ceilings were found, decorated in tempera with simple geometric motifs. These Renaissance cassettone ceilings had been concealed for centuries beneath later Baroque ornament.

The palace exemplifies Renaissance architecture in Ferrara, situated in the city center of the Emilia-Romagna region. Its original 15th-century form consisted of a single floor and a dominant tower. The 16th-century interventions architecturally linked it to two significant neighboring Este residences, the Palazzina di Marfisa d'Este and Palazzo Schifanoia, creating a connected palace complex through garden passages. The Bonacossi family remodeling in the 17th century added late Baroque elements to the facade and interior rooms near the tower. The hidden 16th-century coffered ceilings, revealed during modern restoration, preserve rare evidence of early Renaissance decorative schemes in tempera with geometric patterns.