Ercole d'Este, stayed here for four days in June 1473. On Sunday, writes Allegretto, "the Commune of Siena, or rather the Signoria, arranged a most beauteous dance before the house of Tommaso Pecci in the street, and all the fair ladies and girls of Siena were invited. And my wife either lost there or had stolen from her a goodly knife, ornamented in silver, which cost me eighteen lire the pair. And in the street there was arranged a great vat of forty measures, divided in half, and a column in the middle upon which were a lion and a wolf, so that the lion threw white wine on one side of the vat and the wolf threw red wine on the other side, and a fountain in the midst between the lion and the wolf threw water. And in the vat stood always silver cups, in order that every one could drink. At the Loggia of the Officers of the Mercanzia, ninety-eight couples of ladies assembled and went to the dance in order, accompanied by as many youths, and in front of the house they danced until nightfall, when there was made a rich and fine collation of all kinds of confectionery."[136] Opposite the Palazzo del Capitano, at the corner of the street and the Piazza del Duomo, is the Palazzo Reale, which Bernardo Buontalenti built at the end of the sixteenth century for the Medicean Grand Dukes of Tuscany. In part, it occupies the site of the palace of Giacoppo Petrucci in which his cruel and tyrannical son, the Cardinal Raffaello, resided. Raffaello left it to his nephew, Anton Maria Petrucci. It was here that the Emperor was lodged in 1536; from here Granvelle and Sfondrato made their "buonissima riforma" of the State, and afterwards the Cardinal Ippolito d'Este with his guard of Switzers.