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Abate Luigi

Attraction · Sant'Eustachio, Italy

One of Rome's talking statues, a late-Roman figure of a togate man, roughly life size and headless, the right arm bent with the hand on the chest and a capsa for scrolls at his feet, which dress and attribute mark as a public official. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina places him at the corner of piazza Vidoni, between Sant'Andrea della Valle and the Theatine convent, and Roma Capitale sites both the statue and the piazza in the rione Sant'Eustachio.

History

The Abate Luigi belongs to the group of talking statues called the Congresso degli Arguti, with Marforio, Babuino, Facchino, Madama Lucrezia and Pasquino, and popular tradition named him after a sacristan of the church of the Sudario whom the statue was said to resemble. He stood first on the corner of a small palace on via del Sudario, then in Palazzo Caffarelli Vidoni; the Sovrintendenza Capitolina records that he was moved to the courtyard of Palazzo Chigi when that building was cut back for Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, then to a niche on the Caffarelli Vidoni staircase, and has stood at piazza Vidoni since 1924. The head has been replaced repeatedly after thefts and is now missing. The base carries an inscription by Giuseppe Tomassetti, cut at the order of Prince Giustiniani Bandini: Fui dell'antica Roma un cittadino / ora Abate Luigi ognun mi chiama.

Visit

Piazza Vidoni, 00186 Roma RM

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