A peek inside the Colonna Palace, Rome’s most exclusive tourist site
ROME (AP) — Millions of tourists visit here coliseum And Sistine Chapel Every year, only a very small group of people can step into the gilded halls of the Colonna Palace, the most exclusive place in Rome.
The private house museum hides in plain sight, spread out in four wings along a downtown block. The owners stick closely to the monastic ways, keeping the baroque palace’s paintings, statues, busts, tapestries and 76-foot (249-foot) Great Hall hidden from most prying eyes. On Friday and Saturday mornings, the doors are opened to small groups of 10 people for a few hours under the guidance of art historians.
“We cannot have mass tourism. It is not a desire,” palace restorer Elisabetta Cecchini said, adding that the reason visitors were allowed was because art dies without public appreciation. “It is not designed as a museum to be commoditized.”
The current prince of the family, Don Prospero Colonna, still resides there, and Pope John Paul II still resides there. He rarely approves of holding events such as the publication of John Paul II’s book in 2005 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Catholic fashion exhibition in 2018. designer Donna Versace and Vogue magazine Anna Wintour. Both pointed to rare examples of journalists being acknowledged.
Claudio Strinati, the former director of Rome’s museums, supports the relative seclusion of the palace, saying it is “undoubtedly one of the greatest artistic legacies of humanity” and that the family has a duty to preserve.
“These were not intended as tourist attractions,” he said. “Rather, they were built for those with a certain sense of history.”
The palace belonged to the Colonnas, part of the “black nobility”, since the 12th century; The name of the Roman families who remained loyal to the Pope and the Papal States when the Italian army captured the city in 1870 to create a unified nation. They hung black banners outside their palaces to show that they were loyal, and inside their walls they clung to their masterpieces.
For two centuries, the Colonnas maintained a trust that ensured that the palace’s valuable works of art would remain there forever. Princess Isabella Colonna is known to have saved family treasures. Cecchini said he fled Rome when the Nazis occupied Rome, but later ordered that all works of art be “packed into one wing of the building, the entrances of which were walled up.” The soldiers could not find them.
Today the interior betrays a history of power and privilege. A portrait in the Throne Room immortalizes Oddone Colonna, who became Pope Martin V in 1417 and made the palace his papal residence for a decade. The frescoed ceiling of the Great Hall depicts the exploits of another Colonna ancestor, Commander Marcantonio, who won a 16th-century naval battle that proved to be a turning point for the future of Europe.
“We can say that the Colonna cannot exist without Rome, but even Rome cannot exist without Colonnas,” Patrizia Piergiovanni, the palace’s gallery director, said in an inner courtyard filled with orange trees. “As one of the big families, they contributed a lot.”
With the approval of Princess Isabella, the Great Hall, with its masterpieces set among marble columns and glittering chandeliers, became the setting for the final scene of the 1952 classic “Roman Holiday.” Audrey Hepburn, playing a beloved princess, addressed foreign press organizations and asked a question: Which city did she enjoy the most during her long European tour? After some diplomatic evasions it suddenly stopped.
“Rome,” he said firmly. “Rome, of course. I will remember my visit here as long as I live.”
