Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande , a branch of the National Art Gallery , is also known by the name of Palazzo Pepoli “Nuovo” , to distinguish it from the “Vecchio”, the fourteenth-century residence of the Pepoli family located on the opposite side of Via Castiglione. Built starting from the sixties of the seventeenth century at the behest of Odoardo Pepoli , the new palace was conceived as a stately, modern and sumptuous residence , adequate to represent the social prestige achieved by the Pepoli who, first cloth merchants and later money changers and bankers , had greatly enriched themselves to become one of the most prominent senatorial families in Bologna.

The main floor, donated by Edvige Campogrande to the Municipality of Bologna and now managed by the Polo Museale of Emilia Romagna , hosts a series of rooms beautifully frescoed by the main protagonists of the great Bolognese decoration between the second half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the following century: they range from the Hall of Honor with the triumphal Apotheosis of Ercole di Canuti , to the Sala di Felsina , with the composed and graceful paintings of the Rolli brothers ; from the rooms of the Seasons and of Olympus , where the irreverent Giuseppe Maria Crespi contaminates the celebratory decoration with the ways of genre painting, to the elegant classicism of the Sala di Alessandro by Donato Creti . The rooms of the noble floor host on the walls some paintings from the Zambeccari picture gallery, the rich collection intended for public use at the end of the eighteenth century by the Marquis Giacomo Zambeccari and which became part of the collections of the Pinacoteca in 1884.