Palazzo Gerolamo Grimaldi (Gerolamo Grimaldi Palace), Genoa

The palace Gerolamo Grimaldi - also known as the Meridian building - it's an uphill building in the historic center of Genoa.

It was built between 1536 and 1544 by the Genoese banker Gerolamo Grimaldi Oliva, who got rich in Portugal and Spain where he managed the collection of taxes in Cordoba and Granada. At the time of construction, it stood in an area with little urbanization and a considerable slope, with access and main front on the slope of San Francesco di Castelletto , as well as two side elevations overlooking gardens upstream and downstream, much praised by the architect Joseph Fürttenbach . The frescoes on the north facade , still visible, depicting the Labors of Herculesthey have been attributed to Aurelio Busso.

The fresco decoration of numerous internal rooms, by Luca Cambiaso , Giovanni Battista Castello , Lazzaro Calvi and others was started between 1556 and 1566 under the commission of Gerolamo's son, Giovanni Battista Grimaldi, owner of the famous Villa Grimaldi called La Fortress in Sampierdarena .

The sixteenth - century building , with the dual character of a decentralized city palace and a suburban villa residence, preserves in its extraordinary ambiguity the secret genesis of an architectural renewal that few have so far clearly denounced in its ancestry.