Casina di Raffaello

The name misleads, and the sources say so: it has nothing to do with Raffaello Sanzio, who neither designed the building nor lived in it, and the confusion is with the Casino di Raffaello that stood at Villa Doria in the Galoppatoio. It was built in the seventeenth century for Cardinal Scipione Borghese at the same time as the Villa Pinciana, standing in a mulberry grove that was felled when Piazza di Siena was made, from which came its first name, the Palazzina dell'arboreto de' gelsi. It began as the villa wardrobe-keeper's lodging, with two loggias, one decorated in chiaroscuro; the small square garden beside it, with an orchard and a citrus grove, was replaced in the eighteenth century under the Asprucci by the church of Santa Maria Immacolata. It stayed a private residence until 2003. The restoration reinstated the eighteenth-century arrangement given it by Antonio Asprucci, and the principal ground-floor room carries frescoes by Felice Giani.