Ferrara - Hall of the Months

Known as one of the most famous civil monuments erected in Europe to the epoch of the Communes, the building was raised beginning from 1218.

Between 1306 and 1308, Giovanni of the Eremitanis transformed the three great environments in which the superior plan was almost divided in an only room, 82 meters long, wide over 27, conceiving a new coverage to form a hull of inverted ship.

The frescos of Giotto presumably went destroyed in the fire that devastate' the Hall in 1420. They were restored by the paduan teacher Nicolo' Miretto with Stephen from Ferrara's collaboration, together with other painters.

The cycle of frescos is divided in 333 panels, it develops in three overlapped bands, and it's one of the rarest medieval astrological cycles arrived to our days.

The cycle of frescos is articulated in 12 compartments beginning in the angle between the oriental and the southern wall, with the month of March and they finish with February on the same wall. Every compartment is divided in three bands of nine panels showing (after the apostle who opens the month) the allegorical representation of the month, the zodiacal sign, the planet, the occupations, the works,the constellations. Finally, more elements tightly tied up to the theories of the physician and thinker Pietro of Abano (Abano 1257 - Padua 1315 ca.), the representations of the "individual astrological simbology", that is the articulated human characters according to "each of the 360 ascending degrees during the birth of every individual in the zodiac."

http://www.pd.astro.it/MOSTRA/G0000SAL.HTM

The clock is a fifteenth-century remaking of the original one built by Jacopo Dondi by the Clock, in 1344. The monumental prospectus in istrian stone of the door was realized in 1532 by the architect Giovanni Maria Falconetto. In the most external crown in istrian stone of the great mechanical tower's clock are graven the 24 hours in Roman figures. The inside crown, in painted copper of blue, with gilded stars, fixed, represents the immovable starry sky. The following inside crowns, rotating instead for pointing out the walk of the sun in the zodiac.