VEROSPI PALACE

PALAZZO VEROSPI

Via del Corso 374

In 1565 the Verospi family bought a house and later the building was expanded and renovated by Girolamo Rainaldi (1570/1655)

Completed in about 1610 by Onorio Longhi (1568/1619) who made courtyard, loggia and gallery

Restored at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Alessandro Specchi (1668/1729)

At the end of 1800s it was raised of one floor

On the front there is a plaque commemorating the stay of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792/1822)

The palace belonged in the nineteenth century to the Torlonia family and since 1902 it belongs to the Italian bank CREDITO ITALIANO (now Unicredit)

LOGGIA

Frescos “Apollo and the Gods of Mount Olympus” 1607/08 spectacular masterpiece by Francesco Albani (1578/1660) for Cardinal Fabrizio Verospi

“The feverish knowledge of the almost mythical, to him, Raphael is transformed, because of the obvious imitation of compositional scheme, in the decoration of the gallery of Palazzo Verospi. Francesco Albani there follows the partition wall and the same scenes from the Loggia of Raphael in the Farnesina Villa. But the center rectangle of the vault (between Hesperus and Lucifer, Apollo goes from Spring and Summer to Autumn and Winter to signify the Allegory of Time) is a newer and yet nostalgic temptation to be returned to the ancient flavor of a Hellenistic cameo. Precious memories of culture and classical ardor, steeped in the absolute modernity of a new landscape” (Antonio Boschetto - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

NON-CATHOLIC CEMETERY

CIMITERO ACATTOLICO

Via Caio Cestio 6

The oldest tomb dates back to 1738 but it was officially opened in 1821. Among the celebrities buried here:

The English sublime poet John Keats. He died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821

The other great Romantic English poet, friend of Keats, Percy Shelley. He drowned in the Ligurian Sea near Portovenere in 1822

Antonio Gramsci founder of the Italian Communist Party. There is mistake in the Latin inscription: cinera - ashes - instead of cineres

The American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872/1940). He came to Rhode Island as a child from Norway. When he was 21 he traveled to Europe and eventually he settled in Rome. He bequeathed his home, studio, papers and more than 400 pieces of his work to the Italian Government. The home has been renovated and now is a museum located at Via Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, 20 near Piazzale Flaminio

The Swedish writer Axel Munthe

The Roman painter Enrico Coleman (1846/1911)

The English painter Joseph Severn buried next to his friend Keats

Goethe's son with bronze portrait by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770/1844)

The admiral of the US Navy Thomas Jefferson Page with a marvelous 1899 sculpture by Ettore Ximenes (1855/1926). During the Civil War he fought for the Confederate Army

Emelyn Story wife of the American sculptor William Story (1819/95) with beautiful sculpture "Angel of Pain" that he himself executed just before he died. He was buried in the tomb as well

LITTLE RED HOUSE

CASINA ROSSA

Piazza di Spagna 26

1726 Francesco De Sanctis (1693/1740). Home since 1909 of the FOUNDATION KEATS-SHELLEY MEMORIAL with adjoining rich library specialized in romantic literature with more than 8,000 volumes

John Keats (1795/1821) lived and died here twenty-five years old and the house has remained virtually untouched since then

It contains a rich collection of paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and objects relating to John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron

AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECES:

A reliquary containing a lock of hair from John Milton and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A carnival mask of wax of Lord Byron

Manuscripts of Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning and Joseph Severn, friend and traveling companion of Keats