MEDICI VILLA

 VILLA MEDICI

Viale della Trinità de' Monti 1

1564/75 Giovanni Lippi aka Nanni di Baccio Bigio (about 1513/68) and his son Annibale Lippi (active in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century) for Cardinal Giovanni Ricci from Montepulciano

In 1576 it was bought by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici who kept in here his collection of ancient statues and expanded the right wing

The villa later belonged to the Lorena family and at the end of the eighteenth century passed to the French Government

FAÇADE FACING THE GARDEN

Maybe by Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511/92) with some "Fillers and festoons from the Ara Pacis Augustae" and "Reliefs from the Ara Pietatis Augustae" later reused in the Arcus Novus by Diocletian (284/305)

Since 1804, by the will of Napoleon Bonaparte, it is home of the ACADEMY OF FRANCE established by King Louis XIV in 1666 as the Roman school for the specialization of young French artists

LIBRARY

More than 25,000 books about art, architecture and music

INTERIOR

Decorated by Jacopo Zucchi (about 1542/96)

NORTH TOWER

"Oriental figures" by Émile Jean Horace Vernet (1789/1863) one of the greatest French painters of the nineteenth century

On the opposite side of the avenue FOUNTAIN OF THE BALL CANNON

1587 by Annibale Lippi (active in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century) for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici

The story goes that the sphere of white marble in the center of the circular granite cup was shot from Castel Sant'Angelo on the door of Villa Medici at the order of Queen Cristina of Sweden to wake up one of his admirers, the French poet Charles Errand