On the foundations of ancient residential buildings located in Via Saragozza, in Bologna , starting from 28 April 1519, the construction of today's Palazzo Albergati began - built by the homonymous and important Bolognese family - with permission from the Bolognese Senate. The magnificent building is still at the center of a debate regarding the attribution of the ambitious architectural project, which if the traditional sources date back to Baldassarre Peruzzi , the more recent ones lean towards Domenico Aimo da Varignana.

On 8 August 2008, the western portion of Palazzo Albergati was struck by fire. The restorations following the extensive damage particularly affected some apartments on the ground and first floors, with the total recovery of all the frescoed pictorial decorations , which date from the 17th to the 19th century. On the noble floor, following the collapse caused by the traumatic event, the frieze with the Stories of Hannibal painted by Bartolomeo Cesi around 1615 was brought to light, which had remained hidden under the vault painted with floral motifs: fifteen compartments separated by caryatids where there are also some events of the Second Punic War, clarified by various writings in Latin; among the subjects of greater impact, the passage of the Alps and the battles with the use of elephants.

The frescoes by Cesi , courtly and neo-mannerist interpreter of Counter-Reformation art, testify to the survival of his sixteenth-century workshop, in dialogue rather than in antithesis with the popular and naturalistic declination of the Carraccis which the painter interprets with great inventiveness, vigor, genius , at the same time as the strictly counter-reformation paintings produced in his late activity.