Palazzo Chigi

Roma Capitale's history of the building begins in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Aldobrandini commissioned Matteo Bartolini da Città di Castello; Giacomo Della Porta and Maderno are reported on site, but the page says their contribution «non è stato chiarito», has not been clarified. The palace was sold unfinished in 1659 to Mario and Agostino Chigi, brother and nephew of Alexander VII, and completed by Felice Della Greca, who built the courtyard and the Scalone d'onore; the attic was added in the late 1600s. The Piazza Colonna portal, the courtyard fountain carrying the Chigi emblem of six hills beneath a star, and the interior decoration are eighteenth-century, as is the gilding of the Salone d'oro, done for the marriage of Prince Sigismondo Chigi to Maria Flaminia Odescalchi; its ceiling carries Giovan Battista Gaulli, il Baciccia's Endimione spiato da Diana of 1668. The building was earlier a private residence and then the seat of the Spanish and afterwards the Austro-Hungarian embassy to the Quirinal, from which its nickname «mole Austro-vaticana» dates. The State bought it in 1916; it was the Foreign Ministry from 1922 until 1961, when that ministry moved to the Farnesina.