The highlights of its decorations are the allegorical frescoes with details in tempera by or after Francesco del Cossa and Cosmè Tura, executed ca 1469–70, a unique survival of their time.

The subtext of the festivities embodied in the fresco cycle is the right ordering of mankind and nature under the good government of the Duke, the guarantor of peace and prosperity in the Este dominions.

Under the commissions of Borso d'Este, the architect Pietro Benvenuto degli Ordini was called upon to develop a ducal apartment on an upper level, providing the building with a salone suitable for presentations of ambassadors and delegations, a counterpart of the governing structure of Ferrara housed in the former Palazzo della Ragione, destroyed in World War II.

The learned and elaborate scheme of the allegorical presentations must have come from the immediate circle of Borso d'Este, perhaps from the court astrologer, Pellegrino Prisciani, with some details drawn from Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum.

The rich white marble entrance door survives, though its tinted colors have weathered away and art historians disagree whether it is to be attributed to the painter-designer Francesco del Cossa or to Biagio Rossetti.