The Loggia of the Heroes is the only room in the Palazzo that has decorations both on the vault and on the walls. The decorations represent the Doria dynasty and explicitly exalt its prestige and valour associating the great men to famous Roman heroes. The twelve warriors dressed as ancient Romans depicted on the walls of the Loggia can be recognised as members of the Doria family and are identified as heroes of the noble family by an inscription in Latin above them that literally reads: “The great men of the illustrious family, supreme leaders, performed excellent deed for their homeland”.
The Heroes are inspired by Michelangelo’s statues of the dukes in the Medici chapels in Florence and are linked to one another by a rhythmical sequence of gestures which are one of the most original inventions of Perino del Vaga.
The five little vaults that cover the loggia are in the shape of several hexagons surrounded by fine stucco work in lime and marble dust. They are inspired by the Roman examples of the Vatican loggias and those of Villa Madama. Among the various restoration works that took place in the subsequent centuries, a curious addition can be noted of draperies used to cover the nudity of Perino del Vaga’s figures. The statue of Diana, for example, in the centre of the vault has been largely covered with a drapery (added on at a later date) that, by the use of light-coloured mortar is distinctive of the sixteenth century.
Annibale Angelini, a painter, scenographer and restorer from Perugia worked on the decorations around the middle of the nineteenth century in an attempt to recover the paintings on the wall that had been severely damaged. Angelini had just finished working on the Loggia when, during the first week of April 1849, the Palazzo del Principe was overcome by violent uprisings against Piedmont. The insurgents barricaded themselves in the Doria buildings and General La Marmora fired his artilleries from the Lighthouse on to the Palazzo and then sent out the infantry regiment. Many rebels were killed, the palazzo was plundered and the soldiers jabbed the points of their bayonets into the faces of the heroes in the Loggia thereby disfiguring them. The consequences of the bombings of the following century were even more devastating and destroyed the ceilings of the palazzo causing infiltrations and humidity. Recent restoration work completed in 2002