Piazza Santa Caterina opens up onto the back of Palazzo Ricci which is a fair specimen of a Renaissance home, despite having been used as office space by the town council between1863 and 1927. A staircase ending with a small vaulted 19th-century balcony was added onto the front of the building where two marble columns dating back to 1538 have been positioned.
Although in need of urgent work, the facade still shows traces of its original 16th-century painted decorations with a frieze of cherubs and strings of fish hanging from a wrought-iron, l-shaped, bar-bracket support. The double-lancet windows with small slender columns surmounted by a circular opening, are a late-medieval reminiscence and part of the complete overhaul ordered by Gio. Battista Ricci in 1528.
The main facade, also featuring double-lancet windows with a central column, opens up onto a narrow street called Via del Municipio, where there is a large, black, stone portal, with an image of the Virgin amongst the angels and the contractor’s initials. Imperial portraits decorate the lesene placed atop two hedgehogs. The initials I.B.R. belonging to the owner of the building are inscribed on the slate ceiling panel of a small nearby window.
The elegant vaulted hall inside the building has maintained its original appearance, as have the two marble columns of the staircase leading to the upper floors together with a number of slate ceiling panels and portals bearing the IHS trigram and two window seats decorated with typically Ligurian monochrome tiles, called laggioni.
The building currently houses the Historical Archives of the Finale and the antiquarian section of the Public Library and Media Collection.