Gualtieri

Gualtieri sits on the right bank of the Po, twenty-five kilometers north of Reggio Emilia, on the floodplain the Bentivoglio family reclaimed in the late sixteenth century. Piazza Bentivoglio, designed as a perfect hundred-meter square with arcades on three sides and sixty-nine arches, is the largest porticoed square in Emilia. Palazzo Bentivoglio at the closed end was built between 1594 and 1600 by Ippolito Bentivoglio, who incorporated the older family Casa Vecchia.

The square and the palace flooded repeatedly through the centuries; the 1951 Polesine flood reached 3. 80 meters, marked on the arch keystones. The Palazzo holds the Antonio Ligabue Museum: Ligabue (1899-1965), the self-taught Naïf painter who lived in poverty on the Po floodplain, painted the jaguars, tigers and rural scenes that have made him the most recognised twentieth-century Reggiana artist. The same building holds the Umberto Tirelli costume collection.