The stage that echoed with music

Via San Felice in Bologna. For centuries, a stage, a residence, a museum, a palace, a drawing room for Italy's royal family. And the place where Mozart played. The Palazzo Pallavicini is one of the grand manor-houses along one of Bologna's oldest streets, built for a Florentine noble family on the edge of the city, then extended and adapted to accommodate countless owners over six centuries. Its east wing is the oldest part: commissioned as a country villa by the Sforza in 1463 with an eye to the city's gates, it now houses the Sala della Musica, an intimate concert room built for Prince Victor Amadeus II of Savoy in the late 1770s.

On March 26, 1770, a young Amadeus Mozart performed here, and the palace has been preserving this historic moment ever since. The Palazzo may have been designed for music, but the story of the man who played here is just one thread in a rich tapestry of history.

The palace was owned by multiple families, each leaving its own mark. The Sforza built the east wing, but the palace's current structure dates back to 1790, after it was expanded by the Pallavicini family. Today, the tourists who come to see where Mozart played will still find the palace mostly as it was in 1790, and the room where he played still faces forward to Bologna's gates. But history is never finished, and the palace is very much alive today.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons