SALVIATI PALACE

PALAZZO SALVIATI

Via della Lungara 82-83

1520/27 Giulio Pippi aka Giulio Romano (1499/1546) for Filippo Adimari chamberlain of Pope Leo X Medici (1513/21)

Completed 1552/68 by Giovanni Lippi aka Nanni di Baccio Bigio (about 1513/68) for Cardinal Bernardo Salviati

From 1883 to 1943 it was the headquarters of the Military School of Rome

It was restored and enlarged in 1933

It originally faced the Leonino Port disappeared after the construction of the embankments of the Tiber

On October 16, 1943 1,022 Roman Jews were brought here, and two days later deported to Auschwitz. Only sixteen survived

In 1945 it was for a full year Hospital of the Canadian Armed Forces

Between 1946 and 1950 it was the Military Tribunal

Since 1971 is home to the Centro Alti Studi per la Difesa (Centre for High Defense Studies)

LIBRARY

Three rooms with ceilings decorated in 1883 with “Scenes of battles of the Risorgimento and other military episodes” and “Groups of plants and flowers” by Annibale Brugnoli (1843/1915)

CHAPEL

Paintings by Santi di Tito (1536/1603)

MANCINI PALACE

PALAZZO MANCINI

Via del Corso 270-272

1662 Carlo Rainaldi (1611/91) for Filippo Giuliano Mazzarino Mancini Duke of Nevers and continued until 1690 by Sebastiano Cipriani (about 1660/1740)

Formerly known as Palazzo Salviati is now owned by the Bank of Sicily

Paolo Mancini and his wife Victoria Capocci established here the Academy of Humorists, a meeting place for artists and intellectuals, including G.B. Marino

In 1725 it was bought by the king of France, Louis XV, and was until 1803 the seat of the FRENCH ACADEMY, the most prestigious art school at the time, before it was moved to Villa Medici

The Academy was known as the only public place where it was possible to carry out studies of live nudes, in a period when strict decency was required especially in works commissioned by the papal state

In the GALLERY, a large hall with a barrel vault of 17 m (56 feet) in 1769 students of the French Academy practiced copying into detail the paintings of Raphael in the Vatican Loggia

BOTANICAL GARDEN

ORTO BOTANICO

Largo Cristina di Svezia 24

Built for Alexander VI Borgia (1492/1503), and later rebuilt for Pius IV Medici (1559/65) who employed in it a guardian who was a guide as well

S. Pius V Ghislieri (1566/72) enlarged the garden and entrusted it to the botanic expert Michele Mercati

After a period of neglect Alexander VII Chigi (1655/67) transformed it into one of the major botanical gardens in Europe, using for it the Acqua Paola aqueduct which Paul V Borghese (1605/21) had built from Bracciano to the Janiculum Hill, restoring the ancient Aqueduct of Trajan

In 1820 the Botanical Garden was moved in the garden of Palazzo Salviati in Via della Lungara and in 1873 in the garden of the former convent of S. Lorenzo in Via Panisperna to gather all the scientific institutes in the area of the Interior Ministry on Viminal Hill

In 1883 had its final home here in the garden of Palazzo Corsini when the property was transferred to the Italian State

It is one of the Museums of the Department of Environmental Biology of the University of Rome La Sapienza

Extension of 12 hectares (about 30 acres)

It houses over 3,500 plant species divided into sections:

Palm trees, Bamboo thickets, Valley of ferns, Orangery room, Roses, Japanese Garden, Aquatic Plants, Garden of the simple for medicinal plants and Garden of the aromas

THREE GREENHOUSES:

Exhibition Greenhouse for temporary exhibitions

Tropical Greenhouse with constant humidity of 80%

Corsini Greenhouse built at the end of the nineteenth century for succulents plants with two pools of black marble probably ancient in which it seems that Queen Christina of Sweden bathed

At the top of the hill the original tree structure has been kept, left as the Mediterranean evergreen forest known as Bosco Romano

From the clearings among the secular examples of oaks and sycamores (about 350/400 years old) one can enjoy fantastic views of the city

Below, in the direction of the palace, collection of conifers and near the gate of the palace reconstruction of a small California desert

In this lower area there are an Australian araucaria, an American redwood some Florida taxodium distichum and an oriental sycamore of the fifteenth century

The staircase by Ferdinando Fuga (1699/1782), the FOUNTAIN OF THE MERMEN and the big niche up against the top of the hill are the only preserved eighteenth-century decorations of the garden