This is the first building built on the highest part of Sasso Caveoso which, together with the Church and Convent of Santa Chiara, in the Baroque era, with its position will define the new direction of the nascent Piano district.
The palace was commissioned by bishop Vincenzo Lanfranchi as a new seminary for young people and its project was entrusted to friar Francesco da Copertino. The works, which began in 1668, were completed four years later and incorporated the pre-existing Church of the Madonna del Carmine. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Bishop Brancaccio had the convent of the church decorated with a sundial and five statues representing himself, the three brothers and bishops Gerolamo, Andrea and Giovan Battista Lanfranchi, and his predecessor Antonio del Rios, who had built the Convent of Santa Chiara. At the end of the eighteenth century Monsignor Zunica authorized the extension of the palace towards the area of the Sasso Caveoso tanneries, which took place in the first half of the nineteenth century, when Monsignor di Macco was bishop, who also had the upper floor built to be used as a school. Starting from 1864, with the unification of Italy and the resulting subversive laws, with which the real estate of ecclesiastical bodies were confiscated, the seminary was transferred to the Cathedral and the building became a secondary school. The young Giovanni Pascoli taught here at the end of the nineteenth century for two years, in his first work experience, before becoming a distinguished poet of Italian literature. In the 1980s Palazzo Lanfranchi hosted the Superintendence of the Ministry of Culture and since 2003 it has been the seat of the National Archaeological Museum of Medieval and Modern Art. Among the sections of the museum, there are two special ones, one dedicated to Giovanni Pascoli, and the other to Carlo Levi.
