Palazzo Sylos-Calò
Built around the half of the 16th century the palace is linked to the history of the family Sylos of Spanish origin. They arrived with Captain Consalvo de Cordova and his retinue, feudatory of the city during the war against French and related to the family Calò, another ancient and noble stock in Bitonto since the 13th century. The palace, in spite of the changes made in the course of time, stands as one of the most important models of the Renaissance Apulian architecture. The great loggia, that serves as background to the monumental Cavour Square and contributes with its elegance to increase its urbunlstic value, has recently got its suggestive beauty back, thanks to an important intervention of restoration of the side overlooking the square and, particularly, of the six frontal arches, whose columns lean on tall basements connected by balustrades, while the central and side pillars show semicolumns leaning on the two sides and frontal niches with fine workmanship statues. The right angular pillar serves as a connection between the two arches that represent, instead, the short side of the loggia. which is the most Important thing left from the original structure. The loggia is surmounted by a beautiful inscription In Latin hexameter that tells the hospitality offered to honest people in the building, characterized particularly by a perfect and balanced classical spirit, brings back directly to the work of Florentine masters in South Italy by order of the noble families in the Kingdom: particularly, the presence and the activity in Bitonto of the sculptor Ludovico Fiorentino has been assumed. The long front of the building is organised, instead, to the right of the square, along the alley named Merchants's Street. Here, you can see the wide and monumental main door with impressive ashlar pillars to the sides, surmounted by a wide entablature, and with two symmetrical medallions with emperors' heads crowned of laurel at their limits. In the central part, an inscription brings the hymn to Christ: CHRISTUS VINCIT - CHRISTUS REGNAT - CHRISTUS IMPERAT while downward, in the arch keystone, there is the coat of the family arms. The wide windows that characterize the first floor and the long ashlar part on the ground floor, whose visual unity has been Interrupted by the opening of a series of shops, complete the sight of the palace's front. The inside of the building, beyond the entrance main door, opens beginning from a narrow andron, covered by o depressed vault and set on a series of side lunettes, which leads to an ample courtyard, characterized on three sides by an elegant classical-style portico, with slim columns surmounted by Corinthian style capitals, on which rib-vaults stand. In the north-eastern angle, a double-flight stairway conducts to the rooms of the upper floor. The palace is going to house the National Gallery which will host the "De Vanna" collection previously donated to the State, an important selection of art works (13th - 20th centuries).