Behind the Farnese and Spada palaces, Via Giulia , which runs parallel to the Tiber, was built by Julius II to connect Ponte Sisto with the Vatican. The street was conceived as the centre of papal Rome, and Julius commissioned Bramante to line it with imposing palaces. Bramante didn’t get very far with the plan, as Julius was soon succeeded by Leo X, but the street became a favourite residence for wealthier Roman families, and is still packed full with stylish palazzi and antique shops and as such makes for a nice wander, with features like the playful Fontana del Mascherone to tickle your interest along the way. Just beyond the fountain, behind the high surround of the Palazzo Farnese, the arch crossways the street is the remnant of a Renaissance plan to connect the Farnese palace with the Villa Farnesina crossways the river, while further along still, the Palazzo Falconieri , recognizable by the quizzical falcons crowning apiece end of the building, now the home of the Hungarian Academy, was largely the work of Borromini, who enlarged it in 1646-49.
Entries with Farnese tag
Piazza Farnese
Just south of Campo dei Fiori, Piazza Farnese is a quite different square, with great fountains spurting out of lilies – the Farnese emblem – into marble tubs brought from the Baths of Caracalla, and the sober bulk of the Palazzo Farnese itself, begun in 1514 by Antonio di Sangallo the Younger and finished off after the architect’s death by Michelangelo, who added the top tier of windows and cornice. The building now houses the French Embassy and is closed to the public, which is a pity, since it holds what has been called the greatest of all Baroque ceiling paintings, Annibale Carracci’s Loves of the Gods, finished in 1603. However, newly restored, even from the outside it’s a tremendously elegant and powerful building; indeed, of all the mythologic locations that Rome’s embassies enjoy, this has got to be the best.
The Renaissance And Counter-reformation
As time went on, power gradually became concentrated in a handful of families , who swapped the top jobs, including the papacy itself, between them. Under the burgeoning power of the pope, the city began to take on a new aspect: churches were built, the city’s pagan monuments rediscovered and preserved, and artists began to arrive in Rome to work on commissions for the latest pope, who would invariably try to outdo his predecessor’s efforts with ever more glorious self-aggrandizing buildings and works of art. This process reached a head during the Renaissance ; Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo all worked in the city, on and off, throughout their careers. The reigns of Pope Julius II (1503-13), and his successor the Medici pope, Leo X (1513-22), were something of a golden age: the city was at the centre of Italian cultural and artistic life and site of the creation of great works of art like Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s Stanze in the Vatican Palace and fine buildings like the Villa Farnesina, Palazzo Farnese and Palazzo Spada, not to mention the commissioning of a new St Peter’s as well as any number of other churches. The city was once again at the centre of things, and its population had increased to 100,000. However, in 1527 all this was brought abruptly to an end, when the armies of the dynasty monarch, Charles V, swept into the city, occupying it – and wreaking havoc – for a year, while Pope Clement VII (1523-34) cowered in the Castel Sant’Angelo.
The ensuing years were ones of yet more restoration, and perhaps because of this it’s the seventeenth century that has left the most tangible impression on Rome today, the vigour of the Counter-Reformation throwing up huge sensational monuments like the Gesù church that were designed to confound the scepticism of the new Protestant thinking, and again using pagan artefacts (like obelisks), not to mention the ready supply of building materials provided by the city’s ruins, in ever more extravagant displays of wealth. The Farnese pope, Paul III (1534-50), was perhaps the most efficient at quashing anti-Catholic feeling, while, later, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) was perhaps the most determined to mould the city in his own image, ploughing roads through the centre and laying out bold new squares at their intersections. This period also saw the completion of St Peter’s under Paul V (1605-1621), and the ascendancy of Gian Lorenzo Bernini as the city’s principal architect and sculptor under the Barberini pope, Urban VIII (1623-44) – a patronage that was extended under the Pamphili pope, Innocent X (1644-55).
Palazzo Reale Di Capodimonte
At the top of the hill, accessible by bus #110 from Piazza Garibaldi or #24 from Piazza Dante, the Palazzo Reale di Capodimonte – and its beautiful park (9am-1hr before dusk; free) – was the royal residence of the Bourbon King Charles III, built in 1738 and now housing the picture room of the city museum, the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (Tues-Sun 8.30am-7.30pm; L14,000/¬7.23). The royal apartments, on the first floor, are smaller and more downbeat than those at Caserta but in many ways more enjoyable, not least because you can actually achievement through the rooms freely. That said, you’ll need a keen interest in the Bourbon dynasty to want to linger: high spots are the ballroom, lined with portraits of various Bourbon monarchs and other European despots, and a number of rooms of porcelain, some painted with local scenes and one in particular a sticky confection of Chinese scenes, monkeys and fruit and flowers from the Capodimonte works here. The museum is organized, not chronologically, but by collections: between them the Farnese and Bourbon rulers amassed a superb collection of Renaissance paintings and Flemish works, including a couple of Brueghels – The Misanthrope and The Blind – and two triptychs by Joos van Cleve. There are also canvases by Perugino and Pinturicchio, an elegant vocalist and Child with Angels by Botticelli and Lippi’s soft, sensitive Annunciation . Later works include many Titians, with a number of paintings of the shrewd Farnese Pope Paul III in various states of ageing and the lascivious Danae ; Raphael’s austere portrait of Leo X and a worldly Clement VII by Sebastiano del Piombo; and Bellini’s impressively coloured and composed Transfiguration .
Museo Archeologico Nazionale
Naples isn’t really a city of museums – there’s more on the streets that’s worth perceptive on the whole, and most displays of interest are kept in situ in churches, palaces and the like. However, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Mon & Wed-Sun 9am-7.30pm; L12,000/¬6.20; reachable direct by bus #110 from Piazza Garibaldi) is an exception, home to the Farnese collection of antiquities from Lazio and Campania and the best of the finds from the nearby Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Currently the museum is undergoing a comprehensive restoration, and there’s a good chance you won’t be healthy to see it all. However, the most impressive sections are usually open, and you’d be angry to miss them, especially as they illuminate and enhance visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum. The ground floor of the museum concentrates on sculpture from the Farnese collection , displayed at its best in the mighty Great Hall, which holds imperial-era figures like the Farnese Bull and Farnese Hercules from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome – the former the largest piece of classical sculpture ever found. The mezzanine floor holds the museum’s collection of mosaics – remarkably preserved works all, giving a superb insight into ordinary Roman customs, beliefs and humour. All are worth looking at – images of fish, crustacea, wildlife on the banks of the Nile, a cheeky cat and quail with still-life beneath, masks and simple nonfigurative decoration. But some highlights to look out for include a realistic Battle Scene (no. 10020), the Three Musicians with Dwarf (no. 9985), an urbane meeting of the Platonic Academy (no. 124545), and a marvellously captured scene from a comedy The Consultation of the Fattucchiera (no. 9987), with a soothsayer giving a dour and doomy prediction.
At the far end of the mezzanine is the fascinating Gabinetto Segreto (Secret Room), which reopened in 2000 after nearly thirty years. The room contains erotic material taken from the brothels, baths, houses and taverns of Pompeii and Herculaneum – to see the display, which lurks tantalizingly behind a partition, you need to obtain a timed ticket (no extra charge) from the entrance hall. The objects in the collection weren’t always segregated in this way; it was the shocked Duke of Calabria who, having taken his wife and daughter to view the museum, decided that the offending objects should be removed from the gaze of ladies. From then until the time of Garibaldi they were kept under lock and key, disappearing again from public view in the twentieth century for long periods. The artefacts, from languidly sensual wall-paintings to preposterously phallic lamps, bear testimony to Roman licentiousness, although the phallus was often used as a kind of lucky charm rather than as a sexual symbol – cheerfully hung outside taverns and bakeries to ward off the evil eye. Free English-language tours of the Gabinetto are admirably serious and smut-free, though it is hard to repress a giggle at the sculpture of a man whose toga is imperfectness to mask an erection, or at the graphic but elegantly executed marble of Pan “seducing” a goat.
Upstairs through the Salone della Meridiana, which holds a sparse but fine assortment of Roman figures (notably a wonderfully strained Atlas and some demure female figures – Roman replicas of Greek originals), a series of rooms holds the Campanian surround paintings , lifted from the villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and rich in colour and invention. There are plenty here, and it’s worth devoting some time to this section, which includes works from the Sacrarium – part of Pompeii’s Egyptian temple of Isis, the most celebrated mystery cult of antiquity – the discovery of which gave a major boost to Egyptomania at the end of the eighteenth century. In the next series of rooms, some of the smallest and most easily missed works are among the most exquisite. Among those to look out for are a paternal Achilles and Chirone (no. 9109); the Sacrifice of Iphiginia (no. 9112) in the next room, one of the best preserved of all the murals; the dignified Dido forsaken by Aeneas and the Personification of Africa (no. 8998); and the series of frescoes telling the story of the Trojan horse. Look out too for the group of four small pictures, the best of which is a depiction of a woman gathering flowers entitled Allegoria della Primavera – a fluid, impressionistic piece of work capturing both the gentleness of spring and the graceful beauty of the woman.
Beyond the murals are the actual finds from the Campanian cities – everyday items like glass, silver, ceramics, charred pieces of rope, even foodstuffs (petrified cakes, figs, fruit and nuts), together with a model layout of Pompeii in cork. On the other side of the first floor, there are finds from one particular house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum – sculptures in bronze mainly. The Hermes at Rest in the centre of the second room is perhaps the most arresting item, rapt with exhaustion, but around are other adept statues – of athletes, suffused with movement, a languid Resting Satyr , the convincingly woozy Drunken Silenus , and, in the final room, portrait busts of soldiers and various local big cheeses.
