The story
About 8,500 blocks of white marble veined with pink cover the outside of Palazzo dei Diamanti, each one carved to a pyramid point like a cut diamond. The architect Biagio Rossetti designed it for Sigismondo d'Este, brother of Duke Ercole I, and it went up between 1493 and 1503. It stands on the main crossroads of the Addizione Erculea, the new quarter Rossetti laid out when Ercole pushed Ferrara's city walls north.
Today the main floor holds the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara's national picture gallery, largely given to the painters who worked in the Este city, among them Cosmè Tura, Dosso Dossi and Garofalo. One of its most striking pieces comes from somewhere else. It is a small fragment by Andrea Mantegna, the Paduan master who worked for the Gonzaga court in Mantua, showing Christ in glory receiving the Virgin's soul, which appears as a small swaddled child. It once formed the top of his Death of the Virgin, now in the Prado in Madrid. The ground-floor rooms are used for the large temporary exhibitions held here.
