The four battlemented corner towers are gone: Duke Giuseppe Giordano had them pulled down, determined to bring his residence into line with eighteenth-century taste. The moat went the same way, and only the memory of it survives. Those two absences say more about the building than any façade does. Read as the remains of a fifteenth-century stronghold, they place the palace in the second half of that century, when it belonged to the lords who held Oratino before the Giordano family. Other historians push the foundation forward to the late eighteenth century, to the family that gave the house its name.
That family came last, at the end of a long and far from linear chain of owners: the fief of Oratino almost never stayed in the same hands for long. The Giordano bought it from Antonio Vitaliano, fourth and last duke of Oratino, and were made dukes themselves by a diploma of 10 August 1729; the Kingdom of Italy still recognised the title in 1882. In between, the earthquake of 1805 damaged the house, and the north-eastern portion was rebuilt from scratch.
What to see
The detail to look for sits above the main entrance: a cross vault in local stone, its archivolt carved with acanthus leaves. That is no small thing in a village that turned stone into a trade — Oratino is known for its tradition of stonemasons — and here the chisel work can be studied at close range, at eye level. Past the entrance passage lies the inner courtyard, ringed on every side by a portico.
Our editors' tip
Before you leave, look at the town's coat of arms, which condenses the whole story: an elm on a blue field, the emblem of the Giordano, topped by a crescent moon that belonged to the Vitaliano dukes, with two silver eight-rayed stars on either side. Two houses and a couple of centuries of changing hands, all in a single design. The palace stands in the old centre that earns Oratino its place among the borghi più belli d'Italia; the whole village is walkable, and worth taking slowly.