Palazzo Arcivescovile
Facing Piazza Duomo, beside the cathedral and the bell tower, the Archbishop’s Palace, the Episcopio, is the seat from which the Church of Brindisi has governed its own history for almost a thousand years.
From the Norman revival
The palace was born with the Norman rebuilding of the city: in the 11th century, lifting Brindisi out of the medieval invasions, the Normans wanted a home worthy of ecclesiastical power beside the cathedral. Piazza Duomo thus became the heart of the city’s religious government, and so it has remained to this day.
A deliberate restraint
Over the centuries the building was enlarged and transformed several times. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, in the climate of post-Tridentine renewal, it took on its present appearance: an architectural restraint that is a precise choice, no ostentation or decorative Baroque, only the stone, the proportions and the measured elegance of Apulian Romanesque.
The heart of the diocese
Within these walls far more than the liturgy was decided: schools, care for the poor, the safeguarding of the diocese’s artistic heritage. Today the palace is the seat of the Archbishop’s Curia of Brindisi-Ostuni, archives, pastoral offices, the written memory of one of the oldest dioceses in the south.
Where it is
Piazza Duomo, Brindisi