Palazzo dell'Agricoltura

Italian Wikipedia records that the palazzo was built between 1908 and 1914 at the wish of Francesco Cocco-Ortu, Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. The frieze carries three Latin inscriptions, and the interior decoration runs on agricultural and rural themes, with the article's own caveat that the documentation is too thin to explain how the artists were chosen. The building houses the biblioteca storica nazionale dell'agricoltura, first created in 1848, and it is the seat of the Ministero dell'agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste.

The Ministry's own account of the building describes an atrium by the engineer Giuseppe Canonica, who found the original vestibule too cramped, had its end wall taken down and moved the columns so that they became load-bearing. It has twenty-two columns of red Baveno granite and bronze high reliefs above its six side doors, framed in coloured marble. The five gates connecting the atrium to the street, the lamps outside and the wrought-iron lights within are by the Roman artist Alberto Gerardi, who won the competition held for the commission. Three bronze bas-reliefs on the left-hand wall are by the Sicilian sculptor Benedetto D'Amore — the Ploughing, the Wheat Harvest and the Working of Iron — and three on the right, on the theme of human labour, are by Guido Calori.

The building is a working ministry and is not open to callers; the Ministry publishes a virtual tour of it instead.