Casa Bellonci

Since the mid-20th century, the Casa Maria e Goffredo Bellonci in the Parioli district has welcomed the major protagonists of Italian literature. Since 1951 it has been the venue for the meetings of the Amici della Domenica, and until 2019, the five final candidates of the Premio Strega, the prize established thanks to the collaboration with industrialist Guido Alberti and awarded annually to the author of a book published in Italy, was voted on here.

A literary salon and a meeting place for the different worlds of culture and institutions, the apartment hosts the spouses’ extensive book, archival and historical-artistic holdings – more than twenty thousand books with many first editions that have now become extremely rare and volumes with autograph dedications – that allow us to reconstruct the history of more than seventy years of Italian publishing production: from the book collections contained in Goffredo’s study to the literary and theatrical works that crowd the two long corridors to the art and history books kept in Maria Bellonci’s study along with the documentary material to which the author resorted when writing her novels.

In addition to the book collections, there are also many paintings and graphic works by artists such as Cagli, Campigli, Capogrossi, De Pisis, Mafai, Morandi and Sughi, alongside numerous portraits of Maria Bellonci, executed over the years by Wanda Coen Biagini, Arturo Dazzi and Leonetta Cecchi Pieraccini. Also part of the artistic heritage owned by the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci Foundation is the historic ballot box made by Mino Maccari for the first edition of the Premio Strega in 1947, used until 1980 and recently restored. Also housed in what was originally the bedroom is the blackboard on which votes for the prize were marked, in use until 2021 and replaced due to an injury.

In 2020, the apartment underwent restoration and transformation into a house museum carried out with the contribution of Regione Lazio and BPER Banca.