Villa Aldobrandini

Located between Piazza del Quirinale, via Nazionale, and via Quattro Novembre, the villa looks like a hanging garden enclosed by walls.

You can access it from via Mazzarino, through a steep staircase, between ancient ruins from the end of the I century. The opening of via Nazionale, built after 1870 following the advent of Roma Capitale, led to the drastic reduction of the villa's extensive properties and reduced the territory to its current size.

In 1566, Monsignor Giulio Vitelli bought a vineyard with vegetable gardens and some buildings in Monte Magnanapoli. According to the 16th-century scheme, the villa included a construction, a secret garden, and a park that extended to the palace of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, then Pallavicini Rospigliosi palace. The architect Carlo Lambardi restored and embellished the Villa, enlarging the entrance door by building a loggia above it.

In 1600, Clemente Vitelli, son of Giulio, sold the Villa to Pope Clement VIII (1592-1605), who donated it to his nephew Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, the following year. The new owner's trusted architect, Giacomo Della Porta, equipped the building with stairs, loggias, and a continuous facade on the garden enriched with tall trees, some of which still exist. The avenues displayed statues, now in copy, vases, memorial stones, seats, some fountains, and a fishpond, which no longer exists.

On the upper floors of the palace, there was a very rich collection of works of art left to the cardinal by the Duchess of Urbino Lucrezia d'Este, in 1598. After the cardinal's death, the Villa passed by inheritance to the Pamphilj and Borghese families, who moved much of the Aldobrandini collection to the galleries of their buildings.

Between 1811 and 1814, the Villa was the seat of the French governor in Rome. It acquired a new importance, but immediately afterward it returned to the Aldobrandinis, who kept it until 1926 when, reduced in size, due to the opening of via Nazionale, it passed to the Italian State.

Today, only the garden is open to the public.