Built at
the beginning of the sixteenth century for the Gaddi family, Tuscan merchants
who moved to Rome in the fifteenth century
It was
bought by the Rossi di S. Secondo family and then, in 1567, by the Cesi family
The Cesi family
expanded the building to its current size in 1587
The
exterior was richly decorated with paintings by Polidoro Caldara aka Polidoro
da Caravaggio (about 1495/1543) and Maturino da Firenze (?/1528) now completely
disappeared
Federico
Cesi II Duke of Acquasparta founded here in 1603, the ACCADEMIA DEI LINCEI,
the oldest scientific academy in the world, and hosted several times Galileo
Galilei
He was the
author of the pioneering Tabulae Phytosophicae, a botanical catalog
which also included American plants
Federico
Cesi also had the merit of introducing in botanical research the use of an
instrument called by Galileo Galilei, who had constructed, “goggles to see
minimal things”, but that he called the “microscope”
“In the
Tabulae Federico Cesi gathered in briefly but precisely the fundamentals of
morphology, physiology, systematics, pathology and nomenclature of plants,
recognizing the value of features used to determine the concept of the natural
system. Cesi was one of the first the clearly understand the value for research
of the two new Galilean instruments, telescope and microscope: to the first one
he gave himself the name, the second he personally used in his pioneering
studies of morphology. Notable in this regard is an outstanding Syntaxis
Plantaria (discovered in 1985) which makes him the initiator of the microscopy
of plants. In 1625 he published the Apiarium, now very rare, which is the first
printed work containing observations of living things examined under a
microscope” (Enciclopedia Treccani)
In the GARDEN
there was a small botanical garden
The Cesi
family sold the building in 1798
The
building housed for some time the huge collection of ancient statues formerly
housed in the Palazzo Cesi on Via della Conciliazione
that would eventually be merged in the collections of the Capitoline Museums
In 1940 it
was expropriated by the Italian government and became home to the SUPREME
MILITARY COURT
It is now
the seat of the Council of the Military Judiciary, the Military Attorney
General's Office at the Supreme Cassation Court and at the Appeals Military
Court, the Military Court of Appeals and the Court of Military Surveillance
In 1994 in
the palace the so-called CABINET OF SHAME was discovered containing 695 files
and general ledger showing 2274 crime reports relating to war crimes committed
in Italy during the Nazi-Fascist occupation. It was also found a file of the
British intelligence called Atrocities in Italy with the secret
stamp on it
This
documentary material had been collected by the Attorney General of the Supreme
Military Tribunal, appointed by the Council of Ministers: these are files
regarding the most terrible Nazi massacres of civilians, including: Sant'Anna
di Stazzema, the Fosse Ardeatine, Marzabotto, Korica, Lero, Karpathos and
Haut-Rhin
The
commission appointed to investigate came to the conclusion that there was no
conclusive evidence that the investigation of Nazi war crimes had been covered
up for “reasons of state” in order to maintain good relations with Germany in
times of the Cold War, although some minority members on the commission
disagreed
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