Palazzo Scacchetti opens onto Piazza dei Martiri, the heart of Carpi, overlooked by the buildings characterizing the town's public, religious and social life. Built at the end of the 17th century to comply with the ambition of Gian Carlo Scacchetti, a member of an important merchant family, in 1825 the Municipality of Carpi purchased it to turn it into the headquarters of the town's administrative life.
During the Fascist regime the profiles of the administrators occupying its rooms radically changed: the elective municipal bodies were suppressed and all the functions previously performed by the mayor, the council and the municipal council were transferred to the podestà (head of civil administration) by the government. In February 1927, Carpi's first podesta was appointed and from 1941 a series of prefectorial commissioners succeeded each other to manage the town until Carpi's Liberation on April 22, 1945.
From the balcony of Palazzo Scacchetti, the President of the National Liberation Committee (CLN), Emilio Cabassi, celebrated the town's Liberation, recalling the fight against the Nazi-Fascists and wishing a better future for democratic Italy; from this moment on, the town's government was temporarily entrusted to the CLN until the administrative elections of March 1946.
Don Tirelli, an eyewitness of those intense days, describes that mood as follows: “April 23, 1945 Day of enthusiasm. The flags of Italy without the coat of arms of the House of Savoy waved from the balcony of the Town hall”.
The National Liberation Committee took office in Palazzo Scacchetti, taking up all the functions of legitimate authority, opening a new era of hope and reconstruction. Public administration goes back to democratic practices and four days later, the first democratic municipal council gathers. It is composed of 34 councillors representing all the anti-fascist parties that together had fought against Nazi-fascism. The elective office of mayor is restored and in the 1946 administrative elections, the first in which women also voted, the anti-fascist Bruno Losi, a communist who had been sentenced several times to exile, is elected to lead the municipality
In 1955, during the tenth anniversary of the Resistance celebrations, a plaque is placed on the building façade, engraved with words especially written by Piero Calamandrei to commemorate the yearning "for freedom, independence and justice" that animated the Resistance actions. This is the same text engraved on the Wall of Remembrance at the Fossoli Camp, also erected on that tenth anniversary.
Inside the building, another plaque commemorates the 1984 decree by which the President of the Italian Republic awarded Carpi the silver medal for military valour. This award celebrates the untamed partisan spirit of the citizens during the Nazi-Fascist occupation, making Palazzo Scacchetti not only a historical building, but a symbol of resistance and renaissance.
