Villa Durante

The building is one of the most representative examples of the Umbertino style in Rome.
It was built from 1889 onwards for the Sicilian surgeon and senator Francesco Durante, on the site of Villa Patrizi, which had been bombed in 1849 and was in a state of disrepair when Rome was taken in 1870. The famous architect Giulio Podesti was called in to design the building, as he had already directed work on the Policlino Umberto I, of which Durante was co-founder and head physician.
The rusticated neo-Renaissance façade features an entrance with a pronaos with four Ionic columns supporting the balcony of the central window on the first floor. The windows are framed by semi-corinthian columns supporting a triangular tympanum.
Inside, one can admire in particular a two-coloured floor mosaic in Hellenistic style and the pictorial decorations, which were entrusted to the Sicilian artists Salvatore Frangiamore (1853-1915) and Giuseppe Sciuti (1845-1929), and the Roman artists Giuseppe Ferrari (1845-1929) and Enrico Coleman (1846-1991).
In the early 1920s, the villa was purchased by the Government of the Swiss Confederation to house its embassy. In 1937 it was bought by the Castelli construction company and in 1938 it became the seat of the Academy of Dramatic Art.