Palazzo dell'Orológio / The Palace of Horologe (Pisa, Italy) - Renaissance Architecture on Waymarking.com

Palazzo dell'Orológio is located on the north side of the famous Piazza dei Cavalieri in the historic centre of Pisa.. The palace was finally rebuilt in 1607 for the Knigth's Order of St. Stephen (founded 1554), incorporating the remains of two fortified medieval tower houses.

The Renaissance look of the palace is also the work of architect and artist Giorgio Vasari (the rebuilding was finished decades after his death). Vasari very skillfully contrived the combination of a State prison, the Torre delle Sette Vie (named after the seven streets running into the square), and the Palazzetto dei Gualandi or Torre della Fame (Tower of Hunger). In the latter tower, as Dante recounts in the "Divine Comedy" ("Inferno" 33), Count Ugolino della Gherardesca is said to have been starved to death in 1288, having been accused - probably unjustly - of seeking to establish his personal rule during his period of office as Capitano del Pópolo. The façade was decorated with frescoes by Giovanni Stefano Maruscelli and Filippo and Lorenzo Paladini using iconography suggested by the General Curator of the Order of Knights, Rodolfo Sirigatti.