Palazzo Pretorio or Palazzo dei Commissari Granducali is a classic example of Renaissance architecture, with a square plan and a courtyard bordered by a two-order portico. Initially it was the seat of the Court of First Instance for the whole of Tuscan Romagna to which one had to appeal for all civil cases heard in the various captaincies of the province. It was built to a design by Baldassarre Lanci. Inside the palace, there are still the decorated rooms destined for noble life and the rooms that housed the civil and criminal courts of the entire province from the end of the 16th century to the modern age, including the narrow dungeons connected by a double-helix spiral staircase, of Leonardo’s invention. The Palace is also home to the Museum of Man and the Environment, which narrates the ethnographic and naturalistic evolution of the territory, from archaeology to relics of rural tradition.
