Palazzo dei Diamanti stands along today's Corso Ercole I d'Este, the main axis of the Addizione Erculea, the urban expansion commissioned by Duke Ercole I at the end of the fifteenth century and now part of Ferrara's UNESCO World Heritage site.

Since the twentieth century, the ground floor has served as the exhibition venue of Ferrara Arte, while the piano nobile houses the Pinacoteca Nazionale.

The exhibition Rinascimento a Ferrara. Ercole de' Roberti e Lorenzo Costa, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi and Michele Danieli, marked the reopening of the palazzo after a long restoration and refurbishment project carried out by the Rome-based studio Labics with 3TI Progetti.

Over one hundred works from international museums and collections were dedicated to the two masters of the Ferrarese Renaissance between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, alongside contemporaries such as Cosmè Tura, Andrea Mantegna, Niccolò dell'Arca and Marco Zoppo.

In terms of the exhibition design, curated by Giovanni de Vito, the show also served as a testing ground for the palazzo's new layout: Labics' intervention re-established a continuous, circular route through the rooms of the two wings, connected by a new glazed pavilion overlooking the garden, and equipped the exhibition spaces with counter-walls that integrate and conceal the technical systems, leaving the Renaissance spaces clearly legible.

The works were thus displayed within an entirely renewed museographic framework, designed to reconcile conservation requirements with the building's original spatiality.