15. Bertini (Floridia) Palace

The Bertini Palace was built towards the end of the 18th century by the Floridia family and later acquired by the Bertini family (Fig. a).
What is striking is the extreme height of the palace entrance portal and the apparent incompleteness of the angles, whose bases appear on a different plane from the street, due to the subsequent lowering of the ground level (Fig. b).
Above the entrance door is a magnificent curvilinear balcony and, to the side, three flush ‘Roman-style’ balconies (Fig. c).
These balconies are carved with masks on the key segments of the arches. They represent characters from the popular culture of the period, such as the “pitocco” (the poor man), with his deformed and toothless face (Fig. d), the nobleman, with his austere and full of himself look, and the rich man, a chubby oriental merchant (Fig. f). The interpretation given to these masks, is that of the “three mighty men”: the poor man, heedless of everything because he has nothing to lose; the nobleman, because he knows that his power is beyond laws — the merchant who can do everything through money.