Palazzo Ritacca-Valentini is located in the square in front of the church of San Giorgio Martire and is currently the seat of the Municipality of Zumpano. The current building differs considerably from the original one having been the palace remodeled several times and having suffered damage following the numerous earthquakes that have struck our region over time (many buildings were ruined in the earthquake of 1184, very fatal for Cosenza and in that catastrophic of March 27-28 and June 8, 1638).
 
From some architectural and structural elements, the period of the building can be traced back to around the year 1000.
Built on previous foundations, it retains traces of the primitive structure in the current multipurpose room and in the porch that connected the building to an alleyway of today's Via Roma.
Only around the fifteenth century was the first floor erected with an order of arched windows still visible on the masonry facing via Roma, beginning to take on the shape of a "palace". In the seventeenth century the second floor was added and in the eighteenth century, according to popular tradition, a third floor that no longer exists.
The building built in local stone mixed with concrete follows the course of the main road. It has a stone portal with a round arch and keystone decoration. In the shape of the windows, consisting of a horizontal wooden crossbar (surmounted by red bricks) supported by vertical axis piers in calcareous tuff from the Mendicino quarries, the fundamental need was felt to solve with artisan intuition, the static problems connected to frequent earthquakes .
Emblem of local history and traditions, it is supposed that originally it was not supposed to be a noble palace but a sort of deposit for the community of refugees from Cosenza who escaped the Saracen invasions.
It is not known who the owners were during the first centuries. In the 15th century it was probably the home of a noble family called "Anjou". During the sixteenth century it was the seat of a judicial court, summary justice was practiced there because of brigands who infested the territory. Popular tradition says that the severed heads of criminals were displayed in the windows of the building.
In 1830, one of the most illustrious characters of Zumpano, the patriot of the Risorgimento Angelo Ritacca, established the headquarters of one of the first Carbonare sales in the province of Cosenza. In fact, the most recent historical sources indicate the Ritacca family as owners of the building from the end of the 1700s to around the entire 1800s. The reason why Angelo Ritacca's heirs fell into ruin is unknown; the large family fortune was partly expropriated and auctioned, partly sold out of necessity. The minor children of Pietro Ritacca (in turn Angelo's son): Carolina, Pasquale, Maria Candida and Rosa were forced to sell the aforementioned building and other properties for the sum of £ 10,000.00, which were purchased on the 17th September 1889 by Pasquale Valentini.
Traces of the Ritacca family were lost.
 
At that time, Palazzo Ritacca had the characteristics of a charming, large, welcoming and bright building that overlooked the square and had a common courtyard inside; the common spaces were in fact quite numerous and widespread while the rooms to which a "garden" was often added were usually few, the building was in fact divided into several parts, commonly called "quartini". It was rented to several families, most of which "extended", in the sense that the new families that came to be constituted by marriage often remained under the roof of one of the families of origin. Many of the families we have news of lived on their own resources as the main activity of that period was agriculture. Outside the built-up area, in one or more common areas, all kinds of waste were dumped. It also had numerous outbuildings: casalini, woodshed, haystack, stable, oil mill, cistern and oven, contiguous or distributed in the vicinity, often places of common aggregation.
The building belonged to the Valentini family until 1986, when it was purchased by the Municipality of Zumpano and later completely renovated. Over time the building was used for other functions, as well as a home. Immediately after the unification of Italy one of its rooms was converted into a post office; in the 1940s a cellar was opened on the ground floor and the Chamber of Labor on the first floor; it was the seat of the Municipality, middle school section, medical clinic in the 60s-70s of the last century; from 1973 to 1985 the sections of the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democrats were hosted there.