The Visocchi Palace took its present form between the first and second half of the 18th century, presumably by assembling pre-existing buildings, on the initiative of Gaetano Visocchi, land portolan in Terra di Lavoro.Its exterior appearance is well preserved with light late Baroque decorations and carved railings; the 18th-century layout is also still intact inside, consisting, in sequence starting from the ground floor, of cellars, service floor, kitchens and pantries, reception floor, flats, and granaries. On the piano nobile is the gallery with large halls, the central one of which is decorated with neoclassical motifs on the walls, on the vault mythical figures courting around Mercury.
Parallel to the gallery are the bedrooms with tempera decorations on the walls and vaults, inspired by the four seasons. Interesting, in the dining room, is a rare specimen of wallpaper, known as “French paper”, produced in the early 19th century using the continuous stain system by the Lefevre paper mills in Isola del Liri, an industrial centre famous at the time as Italy's Manchester.
Of particular interest is the presence of a private chapel, with a choir, accessible from inside the palace, which is open to the public for celebrations of the Our Lady of Loreto, to whom the chapel is dedicated, and the Corpus Christi, according to ancient local traditions.
Monsignor Aniceto Ferrante, from Alvito, bishop of Gallipoli, was born in this house in 1823, during a short stay of his mother as a guest of his sister.
He was born here in 1899 Luigi Visocchi, engineer, one of the technicians who collaborated with Umberto Nobile the construction of airships for expeditions to the North Pole. He then followed Nobile to Russia in the 1930s, when the General was called upon by the Soviet government to build airships.
Since its origin, the palace has belonged to the Visocchi family, who settled in Val di Comino at the end of the 16th century, by virtue of the privilege that attributed a fiefdom to the progenitor the bishop Biagio Visocchi, an officer in the army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, from northern Europe, presumably Poland.
The Visocchi family held military and administrative positions for generations until the Unification of Italy. A cadet branch of the family, according to local tradition “the Visocchi fuori” (to signify their residence outside the city walls of Atina), established themselves in the fields of industry, agronomy and politics.
