Palazzo “De Judicibus” was inhabited until just a few years ago by the wealthy De Judicibus family, which hailed from Molfetta and reached Casarano at the turn of the twentieth century; it is now municipal property.
It covers an area of about 900 m2, plus the garden which covers approximately 1000 m2; both may be dated to the eighteenth century. A Baroque portal opens on the front, with volutes, topped by a loggia with two large, heart-shaped windows. The spacious loggia overlooks the piazza from an elegant balustrade. Crossing the palazzo’s majestic portal, we reach a square-shaped patio, onto which face elegant balconies, their small columns rotated 45°. This setting, which serves as a filter between inside and out, has the sinuous, elaborate forms typical of Baroque art, and is enriched by the presence of age-old palm trees.
Crossing the patio, we come upon a typical example of a garden “all’italiana”: rectangularly shaped, it is cut through by two axes crossing at right angles; however, the arrangement is irregular since the areas to the left of the main axis are larger in size (about double) than those to the right.
The paths end at two niches decorated by mixtilinear elements and volutes; one of the two – and specifically the one placed at the end of the secondary axis – frames a fresco depicting a fairy-tale landscape. On the palazzo’s terrace, from which the entire garden may be admired, are the remains of an ancient, painted dovecote.