The palace’s name comes from its position once near the cannon foundry. It is one of the five palaces the Vitelli family built in Città di Castello in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was built between 1521 and 1545. The basic design comes from Florentine designs because the Vitelli family were in close contact with the Tuscan city. The garden wall of the palace has a fine graffiti decoration, probably designed by Giorgio Vasari and executed by Cristofano Gherardi, known as “Il Doceno”. The palace was built for a wedding, and local traditions link it to the marriage of Alessandro Vitelli and Paola Rossi di San Secondo Parmense. This is recorded inside the palace, too. In 1912 Elia Volpi, famous antiquarian and restorer, brought the palace back to its original beauty and donated it to the town to be used as “Pinacoteca Comunale”.