VILLA TORLONIA

Villa Torlonia is a villa and surrounding gardens in Rome, formerly belonging to the Torlonia family. It is entered from via Nomentana.

It was designed by the neo-Classic architect Giuseppe Valadier. Construction began in 1806 for the banker Giovanni Torlonia and was finished by his son Alessandro . Disused for a time, Mussolini rented it from the Torlonia for one lira a year to use as his state residence from the 1920s onwards. It was abandoned after 1945, and allowed to decay in the following decades, but recent restoration work has allowed it to be opened to the public as a museum owned and operated by Rome's municipality.

The Casina delle Civette (House of the Owls) results from a series of additions to the nineteenth century “Swiss Cabin”, which was originally intended as a refuge from the formality of the main residence. It was designed in 1840 by Jappelli. The outside of the house was faced with blocks of tufo, while the inside was painted in tempera. The complex now consists of two buildings, the principle house and the annex, connected by a small wooden gallery and an underground passage.

 

The museum in the villa contains a small collection of pieces of statuary from the Torlonia collection found in the Villa and several pieces found in the gardens. Giovanni and Alessandro were for almost a century leading figures in the field of art collecting. The works exhibited were in part produced by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716–1799), an eighteenth-century sculptor, restorer and antiques dealer, following Giovanni’s purchase in 1800 of all the works in Cavaceppi’s studio.