This palace was built by Carlo Fontana for the Cardinal Bandino Panciatichi and is celebrated for its fine staircase, the incline of which is so gradual that one of the Panciatichi, an officer on the staff of the Arch Duke of Austria, used to ride upstairs. It was erected on the site of the houses of the Della Casa family, who would not merit special mention if Monsignore Giovanni Della Casa, born in 1503, had not belonged to the chief academies of the day and written _Galateo_, that elaborate essay on good manners whose title has passed into a proverb. He was Archbishop of Benevento in 1544 and soon afterwards Nuncio at Venice. The scandal caused by his burlesque poem _Capitolo del Forno_ probably prevented his being made a Cardinal.[51] The story of the Panciatichi family would be almost a history of Pistoja, as for more than three centuries the little town was torn to pieces by the bloody feuds between them and the Cancellieri. According to tradition they descend from a Roman Consul: “Et genus et nomen gens haec Panseatica sumpsit E Pansa eximio Consule magnanimo; Belligeri Tuscam Pistori venit ad urbem Cum cecidit fato consul uterque pari,” wrote Giovanni Navarra in the XVth century; and in public acts and ancient inscriptions the Panciatichi called themselves _Pansea progenies_. They were lords of many strong castles and townlets in the Apennines; amongst others of San Marcello, which from time immemorial paid them a yearly tribute of 100 lbs. of cheese, 50 loads of beech wood and 3 bushels of chestnuts. The oldest existing document about the family is dated 1057, and relates to Pansa, or Pancio, son of Bellino a knight of the Golden Spur who conceded to the Bishop of Pistoja the right of allowing the friars of S. Salvatore to collect certain tithes. Infrangilasta Panciatichi went to the crusades in 1190 and was taken prisoner by Saladin, but after some months he escaped and returned to Pistoja, where in fulfilment of a vow he gave lands to the church of S. Angelo in Gora.[52] The documents relating to his sons Inghiramo and Lanfranco are curious as showing the feudal rights enjoyed by a great Ghibelline family. Ridolfo Panciaticho, his sons and his brother Angelo, were created knights of the Golden Spur in 1329 by the Commune of Florence, and a few years afterwards the latter was made a citizen. His son Diliano was ambassador to the Emperor Charles IV., and a descendant of his, Bartolomeo, was a most successful merchant at Lyons. His son and namesake, a friend of the artists and men of letters of his day, was himself a poet. In France, where he was ambassador for some years, he became a Protestant, and on his return to Florence was imprisoned by the tribunal of the Inquisition. After suffering torture he publicly abjured in 1552 and was received again into the Roman Catholic Church after long and wonderful ceremonies. The portraits of himself and his wife Lucrezia by Bronzino, are in the Uffizi. His son