Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi Roma
I might be an American in Rome, but there is actually an American princess in Rome and she lives at Villa Ludovisi. Sometimes known as Villa Aurora, the palatial dwelling is hidden behind Via Veneto and is the real-life home of HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi. She has the distinct honor of living with the only fresco Caravaggio ever painted.
Now, let’s be clear: there is no longer a recognized royal family in Italy. However, the Ludovisis were royalty. The princess is originally from Texas, but she gained her titled when she married HSH Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi in 2009.
The Texan was previously known as Rita Jenrette, and was once married to U.S. Representative Jon Jenrette. However, her third husband was the reason she moved to Rome. She met him when she worked in real estate and was showing off one of his Italian properties to a client interested in building a hotel.
Hotels near Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome on Tripadvisor: Find 28,353 traveller reviews, 50,035 candid photos, and prices for 1,540 hotels near Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi in Rome, Italy. Hotels near Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome on Tripadvisor: Find 28,353 traveller reviews, 50,035 candid photos, and prices for 1,540 hotels near Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi in Rome, Italy. Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi / Villa Aurora We had an amazing tour of the Villa Aurora, also known as the Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi. Make sure to read up before you go: the history of the villa is quite amazing and it is literally packed full of art and history. The tour must be booked in advance and there is a. The Archivio Boncompagni Ludovisi is an international digital humanities collaboration founded in 2010 by the head of the Boncompagni Ludovisi family, †HSH.
Prince Ludovisi’s title comes from Piombino – a state that his family once ruled until it was abolished by Napoleon. Their holdings have now been reduced to 7 acres of gardens and the lovely Villa Aurora, which is filled with priceless artwork.
The Ludovisis are related to Pope Gregory XV. They went on to become nobility thanks to their close Papal connections. Their property once covered most of this side of Rome, near Villa Borghese and the Spanish Steps. But it was sold off and subdivided to create the exclusive neighborhood around Via Veneto.
Caravaggio Fresco
Villa Aurora inside Villa Ludovisi takes its name from a fresco of the same title by Guercino. However, Villa Aurora is best known for having the only Caravaggio fresco in existence. Caravaggio is famous for his moody portraits with incredible lighting but these were all painted on canvas. This image is painting directly onto the ceiling, so it can never be moved outside of Villa Aurora.
The work was commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, who contracted Caravaggio to paint the three gods Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune on the plaster ceiling of his alchemy lab.
While this is Caravaggio’s only fresco, art lovers will be able to tell you that it is not technically a fresco. Fresco is Italian for “fresh” because a true fresco is painted onto fresh plaster that has never been allowed to dry. This, however, was painted by Caravaggio using oil paints, directly onto the dried plaster of the villa’s ceiling.
Every figure in the painting has Caravaggio’s own features and all three are considered to be self-portraits. Except for the dog – but the dog is modeled on Caravaggio’s own canine companion.
This priceless artwork was not to everyone’s taste. At some point in history, the fresco was whitewashed over. This might have something to do with the full frontal male nudity that Caravaggio included here.
Luckily, it was rediscovered in the 1960s. It is located in a small hallway (or anteroom) and takes up most of the ceiling in the narrow space. The Princess mentioned that she now uses the area when she does yoga. (What an incredible place to work out, no?)
How to Visit Villa Aurora
It is humbling to visit the Ludovisi Villa. There are lots of masterpieces to be seen in Rome, but it is rare that you are invited into someone’s home to see a masterpiece in such an intimate setting.
There are works by Guercino and Caravaggio, but also family photos dotting side tables and mixed in with the period furniture.
The villa was first built as hunting lodge in 1570 and now takes up a cool 32,000 square feet on some of the most valuable real estate in Rome. If you visit Villa Aurora, you will be given a tour of some of the front rooms on the ground floor, take a quick peek at the gardens, and then head upstairs to see the Caravaggio fresco and another room that is still being renovated.
It is only possible to visit Villa Aurora with a pre-arranged private tour that the princess will lead herself. This is because this is still the Ludovisi family’s home.
The cost is €300 for a private tour which lasts about 1.5 hours. For that fee, up to 15 people can visit (€20/person). It is worth it to get a group of like-minded friends together to explore the villa because it is your only chance to ever see a Caravaggio fresco. You can also spring that much for a smaller group, or a truly private tour.
To book a tour of Villa Aurora, you must contact tatiana@principedipiombino.com or call +39 06 483942 (lun, mer, ven 9-13).
You might be lucky enough to be surprised by the chance to see their archives at the end of the tour. If you don’t get to see the letters from Marie Antoinette (!!) in person, you can browse the Ludovisi digital archives here.
There are other ways to see Caravaggio painting in Rome even if you are not able to arrange a visit to Villa Aurora. One of my favorites hangs in a church in Piazza del Popolo, and there are several famous paintings at Palazzo Barberini. However, it is worth effort to meet the princess and see her one-of-a-kind Caravaggio fresco.
The Villa Ludovisi was a suburban villa in Rome, built in the 17th century on the area once occupied by the Gardens of Sallust (Horti Sallustiani) near the Porta Salaria.[1] On an assemblage of vineyards purchased from Giovanni Antonio Orsini, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte and others, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi erected in the 1620s the main villa building to designs by Domenichino; it was completed within thirty months, in part to house his collection of Roman antiquities,[2] additions to which were unearthed during construction at the site, which had figured among the great patrician pleasure grounds of Roman times. Modern works, most famously Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Pluto and Persephone, were also represented. The engraving of the grounds by Giovanni Battista Falda (1683)[3] shows a short access avenue from a tree-lined exedra in via di Porta Pinciana and cypress-lined avenues centered on each of the facades of the main villa, laid out through open fields, the main approaches to both the villa and the Casino dell'Aurora[4] converging on gates in the Aurelian Walls, which formed the northern bounds of the park; symmetrical parterres of conventional form including bosquets peopled with statuary[5] flanked the main avenue of the Casina, and there was an isolated sunken parterre, though these features were not integrated in a unified overall plan.[6] The overgrown avenues contrasting with the dramatic Roman walls inspired Stendhal to declare in 1828 that the Villa Ludovisi's gardens were among the most beautiful in the world.[7]
Frescoes in the villa were carried out by Domenichino, Guercino, Giovambattista Viola, and others. A casina was added, largely to house the Cardinal's growing collection of Roman sculptures and inscriptions, which Alessandro Algardi treated to sometimes extensive restoration.
The villa passed to the ownership of the BoncompagniLudovisi family, which in 1872 rented it to King Victor Emmanuel II. The King used the villa as residence for his lover, Rosa Vercellana.[8]
İn 1885, despite great protests among the intellectuals, its last owner, Don Rodolfo Boncompagni Ludovisi, the Prince of Piombino, faced serious financial troubles and decided to sell the property to the Società Generale Immobiliare. The Villa was divided into building lots.[9] The sculptures[10] were dispersed, and most of the buildings destroyed, the only one to remain being the Casino dell'Aurora.[11]
The Via Veneto was driven through the former grounds, part of which are occupied by the American Embassy in Palazzo Margherita, and the Rione Ludovisi took shape, borrowing its district name from the cardinal and his villa.
Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi Roma Barcelona
Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi Romano
The gardens of the Villa and the Aurelian Walls in the early 1880s, in a painting of Ettore Roesler Franz
The Villa gardens, by Luise Begas-Parmentier
Fashionable Via Veneto was driven through the heart of Villa Ludovisi's park
Notes[edit]
- ^A. Schiavo, Villa Ludovisi e Palazzo Margherita, Rome 1981; I. Belli Barsale, Ville di Roma, Milan 1970, vol. III.1; D.R. Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome, Princeton 1991;
- ^Inventories of Villa Ludovisi have been partly published: paintings inventory of 1623 (C.H. Wood, 'The Ludovisi Collection of Paintings in 1623' The Burlington Magazine, 1992) and of 1633 (K. Garas, 'The Ludovisi Collection of Pictures in 1633' The Burlington Magazine, pt. I, ; pt. II, 1967).
- ^The engraving is illustrated in Eva-Bettina Krems, 'Die 'magnifica modestia' der Ludovisi auf dem Monte Pincio in Rom.' Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft29 (2002:105-163) p. 107, fig. 2.
- ^Named for Guercino's ceiling fresco of Aurora
- ^M.P. fritz, 'Der statuenhain in den Gärten der Villa Ludovisi', Daidalos65 (1997:42-51).
- ^The name of the French garden designer André Le Nôtre became optimistically associated with Villa Ludovisi in the 19th century (as in Th. Schreiber, Die antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi, Rome 1880, p. 5).
- ^Stendhal, Promenades dans Rome (18 April 1828), in Voyages en Italie.
- ^Her temporary absence permitted Henry James to inspect the villa and its grounds and indulge in some snobbish daydreams: on-line text.
- ^The Boncompagni Ludovisi financial crisis of 1893-96 is analysed in S. Palermo, Terra, città, finanza. I Boncompagni Ludovisi di Roma (1841-1896), 2008.
- ^The sculptures had been described by Th. Schreiber, Die antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi, Rome 1880.
- ^'Villa Aurora, Rome's best kept secret?'. Minor Sights. Retrieved 20 November 2016.