There are many eighteenth century Veronese and Italian masterpieces collected by the historic owner, Pietro Antonio Serpini, and still part of the artistic heritage of Palazzo Paletta dai Prè.

A beautiful example of  Rococo style, the building was decorated by Veronese artists influenced by Antonio Balestra, the leading eighteenth century painter of Verona.

The artistic heritage of the building begins with the gateway on via Arcidiacono Pacifico and the Butturini coat-of-arms, indicating the fifteenth century origins of the Palazzo.

A refined carving in the hard stone is attributed either to Gregorio Panteo or - by Franzoni and Simeoni - to Domenico da Lugo.

The candelabras in grey slate feature putti, birds and imaginary animals; the beautiful capitols show the front of a winged horse and bust of a woman at the center, supporting the round arch.

The archway includes the coat-of-arms of the Butturini family, and the internal faces of the candelabras include trophies of arms hanging from the mouths of lions. The scrolls show the words: Fausto-Fato.


Entering the hall, paved in terracotta, there is a staircase to the right preceded by two statues that probably represent Paris and Helen by analogy with the two other statues and the iconography of the subject chosen; at the beginning of the second flight the Apollo was sculpted ​​by the nephew of Giambettino Cignaroli, Gaetano.

Stucco and the statue of Diana are attributed to Lorenzo Muttoni, a Veronese sculptor who lived in the Ponte Pietra area, in Via Santa Felicita.

The ceiling of the main floor was probably frescoed by ROTARI, and the original terrazzo tile floors are intact in almost all the rooms.

In the main hall, two large wall paintings depict "The Sacrifice of Iphigenia" by PIETRO ROTARI and "Achilles dragging Hector's body" by CARLO SALIS, framed by painted architectural squares.

Both painters were students of ANTONIO BALESTRA, the acknowledged head of the eighteenth century Veronese school of paining. The two huge canvases are the masterpieces of the painters and were certainly completed before 1752.

The Rotari canvas was painted to a preparatory drawing held in the Ronen Bibliothèque Municipale in France.

In the hall, the painted architecture includes a series of monochrome works depicting scenes from the Iliad and the Aeneid, by GIORGIO ANSELMI, completed in 1765 (as the author himself says in the biography of the Veronese writer Diego Zannandreis).

The ceiling of the hall is nine meters high and was painted by Anselmi in fresco, depicting the "Triumph of Juno and Athena".

In the adjacent room, the wall is decorated with tempera in trompe l' oeil from the first half of the nineteenth century.

Here, the frescoed oval ceiling, also by ANSELMI, depicts " Time and Vanity “.

The third ANSELMI ceiling, mentioned by Dalla Rosa, was painted in oil but has not survived.

During the renovation a ceiling fresco was discovered attributed by Dalla Rosa to PECCHIO and ZELOTTI.

In the salon on Via Barchetta, an additional part of the fifteenth century building, the oil painting on the ceiling depicting the allegory of Fortune or Spring dates back to the seventeenth century .

On the walls, the 8 still lifes on canvas – placed within late eighteenth century plaster - are a rare and perhaps unique feature of Veronese art, perhaps painted by Fra ' Giuseppe Falezza , a Carmelite monk, who worked in the Cathedral area.

In these still lifes and paintings of Villa Allegri, the composition and  late- baroque structure , clearly show the influence of the painter from Parma Felice di Biagi aka Felice dei Fiori, active in Verona at the time and head of the genre specialists at the beginning of the eighteenth century, with numerous followers and imitators .