Wine Lodge - Loggia dei Vini at Villa Borghese

Part of an architectural complex that also included a cave used for storing wine barrels and connected to the kitchens of Villa Borghese’s Casino Nobile by an underground pathway, the Loggia dei Vini is an original and elegant oval-shaped structure with eight large arches on tufa pillars.

It was built between 1612 and 1618 to house, in the summer, the banquets and convivial feasts of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. In this place of delight, guests were entertained in the coolness of the half-light and were offered fine wines and delicious sorbets: literary sources of the time do not fail to emphasize the sumptuousness of the complex, embellished with sphinxes (now at the Ny Carlsberg Gliptotek in Copenhagen), fountains, statues, stuccoes and frescoes.

Two marble tables were used as “sideboard and wine cellar”, while a large white marble table in the center of the loggia had special recesses in which water flowed to keep the drinks in the glasses cool. To further amaze the diners, a mechanical device had been mounted on the ceiling that sent a shower of fragrant petals down on the guests at the end of the banquet. The frescoes among festoons of stucco still visible inside the vault depict “The Banquet of the Gods” and are the work of the painter Archita Ricci, who was active in those years in the church of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura and in several other Borghese commissions.

As of October 2024, the pavilion has reopened to the public; it hosts the contemporary art project LAVINIA.

Loggia dei vini, Villa Borghese, photo credits Daniele Molajoli, courtesy Ghella