FALCONIERI PALACE

PALAZZO FALCONIERI

Via Giulia 1

Built in early 1500 for the Ceci family

Sold in 1574 to the Odescalchi family and, in early 1600s, to Mario Farnese

Sold again in 1637 to Orazio Falconieri belonging to a family of Tuscan bankers who had the FAÇADE (in part), the LOGGIA and the ROOF TERRACE restructured in the years 1646/49 by his friend Francesco Borromini (1599/1667) with the proceeds of the salt trade

The Falconieri family died out in 1865

Since 1927 it is home of the ACCADEMIA D’UNGHERIA (Hungarian Academy) with a library of over 20,000 volumes

“The U-shaped façade overlooking the river, dominated by the loggia proves the versatility of the extraordinary genius of Borromini. His problem was to merge the old and new parts in a unit uniquely marked by his own style. He solved it by gradually increasing the height of the four floors and inverting the traditional graduation of the orders. The ground floor is divided by simple wide bands; in the following floor the same motive is given more prominence; the third floor has ionic pilasters and above these are the columns of the loggia that are set back. So instead of decrease from the ground up, the divisions of the walls grow in importance and plasticity. Only in the context of the entire façade is revealed in full the unconventional and anti-classical style of the motive for the loggia” (Rudolf Wittkower)

Red room, blue room and two green rooms with stunning “Stucco ceilings” made in 1646 by Francesco Borromini

Strange mixture of symbolic, Masonic and hermetic vocabulary (the three circles of gold, the axis mundi) which show one of the most surprising decorative styles of the Roman Baroque

The plasters were originally white and were painted in 1781 on the occasion of the marriage of Constanza Confalonieri

In a room on the ground floor in the vault fresco “Parnassus” maybe of the end of the sixteenth century by Federico Zuccari (about 1542/1609)