Palazzo Lovatelli Caetani

A sober, typically late Mannerist style characterizes the imposing and severe palace in the center of the Rione Campitelli, between the Piazza of the same name and the smaller Piazza Lovatelli. The design of the building, one of the best-known and most interesting of those built in late 16th-century Rome, is generally attributed to Giacomo Della Porta, and its patrons were two brothers of the ancient Roman Serlupi family: Gian Filippo, who ordered its construction in 1580, and Monsignor Girolamo, who had the part facing Piazza Campitelli completed in 1619.

The palace remained the property of the Serlupi family until the mid-18th century. In 1744, it was purchased by the Ruspoli family, who later sold it to the Lovatelli family, a family originally from Ravenna that had become related to the Caetani family following the marriage of Ersilia Caetani and Giacomo Lovatelli. The inscription “Caetani-Lovatelli” adorns the beautiful architraved portals that open into the palace’s simple facades on Piazza Campitelli and Piazza Lovatelli, which are connected by enfilades.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main floor of the palace was an important meeting point for artists, intellectuals and literary figures of the time, both Italian and foreign. In her salon Countess Ersilia Caetani Lovatelli (a self-taught archaeologist and the first woman called to be a member of the Accademia dei Lincei) gathered famous archaeologists such as Mommsen, Helbig, Huelsen or Rodolfo Lanciani, the Egyptologist Mahoffy and the papyrologists Grenfol and Hunt, as well as Carducci, Zola, Liszt and D’Annunzio, author of solemn dedications to “Countess E. L. who sees the ancient world with the eyes of a seer”. The countess opened the doors of her salon for the last time in 1911, when she welcomed archaeological congressmen who had come to Rome for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.