Palazzo Ruspoli

Roma Capitale records that the palace was built in the mid-sixteenth century by the Jacobilli, who ran out of money and sold it in 1583 to the Florentine Rucellai; they had Bartolomeo Ammannati, 1511 to 1592, finish it, giving it the via del Corso façade and a loggia over the garden whose gallery Jacopo Zucchi frescoed. The Caetani bought it in 1629 and had Bartolomeo Breccioli alter the largo Goldoni façade in 1630. Around 1640 Martino Longhi il Giovane, 1602 to 1656, built the staircase of over a hundred steps and the belvedere tower. It passed to the Ruspoli in 1776, who still own part of it. Handel composed La Resurrezione here as the Ruspoli princes' maestro di cappella, and Hortense de Beauharnais, former queen of Holland, stayed here with her two sons, one of whom became Napoleon III. In 1812 the ground-floor apartment housed the Caffè di Bagnoli, known as the Caffè Nuovo.