The oldest of the four buildings that make up the so-called Isola
Mattei (Mattei Block), together with Palazzo
Mattei di Giove, Palazzo
Mattei Paganica and Palazzo
di Alessandro Mattei (now Caetani)
It was
built in part on the cavea of the ancient THEATER
OF BALBUS of 13 BC
It consists
of the union of two buildings:
The one at
No. 19, the oldest, of the end of the fifteenth century with the FIRST
COURTYARD featuring a white marble portal with the coat of arms of the Mattei
family
The portal
leads to a beautiful SECOND COURTYARD with two rows of arches, balcony and
staircase
The two
courtyards were used by movie director Sergio Leone for some scenes of his “spaghetti
western” movies
Renovated
in mid-1500s by Giovanni Lippi aka Nanni di Baccio
Bigio (about 1513/68) for Giacomo Mattei, who built a single façade to
combine it with the other building at No. 17
The FAÇADE
was originally decorated with monochrome frescoes by Taddeo
Zuccari (1529/66) of 1548 representing stories of Furius Camillus,
considered his first masterpiece, but now completely disappeared
On the
front side there is a window which is linked to a legendary story probably not
true: it is said that one of the Dukes Mattei, a compulsive gambler, one night
lost a large sum playing with his future father in law who, knowing he had no
money anymore, refused at that point to give him his daughter's hand
The duke,
anxious to redeem the insult, bet his palace, the only thing he had left,
against the hand of the girl, that he would have made a fountain appear in the
square in a few hours. He invited to his palace his now no longer future father
in law and organized a party until dawn
During the
night he made the beautiful fountain appear. It was actually ready within easy
reach and it only needed to have the pipes connected, having been prepared for
the Jewish Ghetto of which the Mattei family held the keys
The next
morning he invited his future father in law to look out the window, saying, “That's
what a penniless Mattei is able to do in a few hours!” In this way he recovered
the girl's hand but the bride had an unhappy life and had the window walled in
memory of the event
The
real tragedy was for the Roman Jews to whom the fountain was intended: they had
to stay without water for thirty years
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