In the volume distribution and in the sobriety of the rusticated brick portico with a lowered cross vault, the building shows features of the late Renaissance style.
The ambitious original project is attributed by Tiraboschi to the will of Andrea Penci, a prelate at the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, who: “not enjoying health in that climate, resolved to return to his homeland, Rivarolo, where largely imbued with the ideas of the Roman buildings and subsidised by his brother, Count Domenico, had the Penci Palace built in the grandiose and beautiful form that we can still see today”. Built towards the end of the 17th century, it remained unfinished. In fact, the Penci family, favoured by the House of Gonzaga of Bozzolo and Guastalla for the services rendered to them, followed their fate: upon the end of the dynasty, they moved from Rivarolo to Mantua, when they died out in the early 19th century. Over the centuries, subsequent rules, from the Napoleonic to the Hapsburg dominations, plundered the Palace, which underwent extensive internal alterations throughout the 20th century.