When I tell you we visited quite a few palaces while in Rome, you’ll know these were not for personal dinner invitations. They are now museums. Rome is replete with such converted palaces and villas; they make beautiful backdrops for great works of art, sculpture, and antiquities. Today, I’ll give a brief overview, and include links if you want more information.

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This visit to Rome, we returned to the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, one of Rome’s several National Museums, each devoted to a different era’s art and artifacts. This 19th-century palace, very near the railroad terminus, houses masterpieces from the Roman Republic era through Late Antiquity, including bronzes, marbles, and beautiful mosaics. On its second floor, there are many frescoes transferred from ancient villas, notably a favorite of ours from the underground nymphaeum of Villa Livia. Livia was the Empress wife of Augustus. Her getaway villa was built between 39 and 25 BC about 7 miles north of Rome. This alone is worth the visit for us. We marvel at the painted room’s biologically recognizable flowers, birds, fruits, and trees. As usual for us, we spent hours enjoying the museum’s entire collection.

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Since our visit to Palazzo Massimo included entrance to three other national museums, we decided to take advantage and we went to Palazzo Altemps, mostly so Mark could enjoy the architecture and its decoration. Built in the 15th century, it is now dedicated to the history of art collecting, and houses a wonderfully quirky collection of ancient Roman sculptures and fragments displayed in beautiful rooms that were lived in until the mid-19th century. It was the room decoration that took us there, but the sculptures and how they were displayed also caught our attention. My favorite parts were the lavish loggia, overlooking the internal courtyard, and the chapel. 

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Once again, for a second visit, we went to the Villa Farnesina just across the Tiber in Trastevere. When we were there five years ago, much of its interior was in scaffolding so we hoped to see it fully this time, and we were not disappointed. It is a beautiful, early-16th-century Renaissance villa built by Agostino Chigi, a wealthy banker, and later acquired by the Farnese family as a get-away villa, conveniently located directly across the river from their massive city palace. It is filled with gorgeous frescoes throughout, some of which were painted by Raphael.

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One day we decided to stay close to “our” neighborhood (Campo de’Fiori area), so we went to Palazzo Spada to visit the eponymous Galleria Spada, just two palazzi over from the Palazzo Farnese. The gallery consists of four rooms, and is the only section of the palazzo open to the public. But, oh, what rooms they are! It is in a back wing added in the 1600s by Cardinal Spada after he bought the 16th-century palazzo; he did this to accommodate his significant art collection. This includes a number of artists whose names remain prominent to this day – Titian, Rubens, Carravaggio for example – and some who are just being rediscovered, like Artemisia Gentileschi. Her paintings are so rich and sensitive that, regardless of their size, they drew our eyes immediately (the lute player below – the paining opposite is by her father, Orazio Gentileschi). Beside the palazzo is a giardino segreto. “Secret” meant private. In this private garden is a perspective colonnade designed by Borromini, an optical illusion of an arcade that appears to be 120 feet long, when, in reality, it is only 26 feet long. At the end of the view down the arcade, is a “life-size” sculpture of Mars, the Roman god of war, that is in fact only 24 inches tall.

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The Galleria Borghese, once referred to as the Villa Borghese Pinciana, is situated in the far eastern edge of the lush Borghese Villa park, above the Piazza del Popolo. The Galleria is best accessed from Via Pinciana. While a walk in the expansive gardens and park is a welcome respite from the noise and stunning glories of Rome, I highly recommend taking a taxi to preserve your energy for viewing the collection. The Galleria houses a dazzling collection founded by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the early 1600s, one of the most prestigious art collections in the Western world, with masterpieces by artists such as Bottecelli, Rubens, Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, and breathtaking sculptures by the young Bernini (below: Apollo and Daphne; the Rape of Proserpina; David, and Æneas, Anchises, and Ascanius).

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The Villa Medici, is a 16th-century Mannerist villa, built by Cardinal Ferdinand de’Medici. In 1803, when Napoleon occupied Rome, he moved the nearly 150-year-old French Academy of Rome into this villa, and it has been there ever since. Not surprisingly, we were greeted in French when we arrived. Though still functioning as a place of study, retreat, and practice for artists, in 2009 it was opened to the public for the first time. Tours are offered in French, Italian, English, and Spanish. The entrance façade is one of the most stark, fortified buildings in Rome, but viewed from the back garden, you experience its startling beauty. Because gardens are fragile and transitory if not maintained, we forget gardens were the culmination of a connoisseur’s collection, with rare plants, fine sculpture, and erudite references to antiquity assembled around symbolic themes among their clipped hedges and pavilions. No surprise then, that the regular tour spends much time in the gardens. Of special note was Cardinal Fernando’s study, or studiolo, nicknamed the “Bird Room.” The tour ends with a return to the immense loggia and a visit to the opulent suite of Cardinal de’Medici. 

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We got tickets online for visiting Palazzo Barberini, a 17th-century baroque palazzo designed by Moderna (of Vatican façade fame), Bernini, and Borromini for the Barberini family at a time when one of their members was Pope Urban VIII. Our intention was to see the special Bernini exhibit it was hosting in one wing. However, I made a delightful mistake when I booked tickets for the regular wing. This is one of the several national galleries, and we enjoyed its spectacular collection that included works by Raphael, Caravaggio, Holbein, and — always look up — some dazzling frescoed ceilings. My “oops” was easily remedied, and our day richly extended by purchasing a second set of tickets for the Bernini show. 

The Bernini Exhibit was small and spectacular; and there were few other visitors. The exhibit included works by Bernini’s father, by him, and contemporaries who were heavily influenced by his inventive new style. Bernini, though mostly remembered as a sculptor and architect, was also a fine painter, and here, as at the Borghese, we again encountered many of his paintings. The exhibit included some exquisite study drawings for the baldacchino in Saint Peter’s Basilica. They were small, but intricate, and it was fascinating to see how he considered design variations and its projected appearance from different angles. As one might expect, there were numerous busts of Pope Urban VIII, a major patron of Bernini.

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Do you have a free Saturday while in Rome? I would highly recommend securing advance tickets for the Galleria Colonna, which silver-screen buffs will recognize as the setting for the final scene of Roman Holiday. Among much that is remarkable about this palazzo, is that parts of it date to the 13th century, and it has been the home to the Colonna family for more than 20 generations; they still reside there. Its vast art collection includes works by Pinturicchio, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Tintoretto, Ghirlandaio, and Cortona, and behind the palace is one of the finest surviving baroque gardens in Rome, a steeply-terraced setting that affords nice views of the roofs and cupolas of Rome. As a food blogger, my favorite painting is one of its most famous — The Beaneater by Annibale Carracci. The painting dates to the mid-1580s and is noteworthy as it combines three aspects rarely seen in a single painting: still life, portraiture (of a peasant), and that peasant eating. 

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The Castel Sant’Angelo is perhaps the oldest of the palazzi we visited, and most would not even consider it a palace. It was built between the years AD 134 and 139 as a mausoleum for Emperor Hadrian, where his ashes were placed in an urn in AD 138. But it didn’t remain a tomb. It also served as castle and prison. In 1277, Pope Nicholas III built an emergency escape route — a covered bridge called the Passetto di Borgo — from the Vatican’s fortifications to the castello, where there were apartments for popes who might need them in emergencies. The passetto and apartments were used for such emergencies only twice — in 1494 by Pope Alexander VI to escape the invasion of King Charles VIII of France, and in 1527 by Pope Clement VII to escape the sacking of Rome by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s rampaging soldiers. The castle was also used for lavish banquets, and sometimes simply as a getaway. Now, it is a national museum. It includes a gallery of paintings, drawings, etchings, and architectural models of the structure’s history. Visitors can walk the upper parapets, visit several suites of papal apartments added or remodeled by several generations of early and late Renaissance popes, most spectacularly by Paul III (of the powerful Farnese clan), and also galleries with rotating exhibits. The visit culminates in the uppermost terrace just under the immense mid-18^th century bronze statue of Saint Michael the Archangel that gives the castle its name. And, as promised, another Tosca reference for you: the final scene from Puccini’s tragic opera takes place there. Tosca, crushed by the news that her lover Mario had been duplicitously shot by a firing squad, flings herself off the battlements of the castello to her death to escape being arrested.

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What’s up in the next installment? Everything else — historical sites, street art, visits with friends, and great places to eat. Stay tuned!