Palazzo Scalmafora

Palazzo Scalmafora tells the story of a revolt. In the seventeenth century Brindisi was under Spain, amid misgovernment, plague and taxes paid only by the common people, since the nobility and clergy were exempt. On 5 June 1647, a month before Masaniello's revolt in Naples, people here too took to the streets shouting "Long live the king, death to misgovernment".

The crowd set fire to the palazzo of the tax collector Ludovico Scolmafora, who saved himself by taking refuge in the nearby Dominican convent, today the Town Hall. The palazzo was rebuilt in 1652.

Look up at the windows: each bears a Latin motto born of those days, such as "Combusta reviviscit", what was burned is reborn, or "Ne gloreris in divitiis", do not seek glory in riches. In the building you can still read the medieval part, the fifteenth-century additions and the restoration after the fire; in the courtyard the old vaults show beneath the balconies and stairs.