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Palazzo Spada

Historic site · Regola, Italy

The palace that holds the Galleria Spada and Borromini's perspective colonnade, and that has been the seat of the Consiglio di Stato since 1889. Its façade carries statues of Trajan, Pompey, Fabius Maximus, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Marcellus, Caesar and Augustus, with their deeds set out in eight panels on the top floor. The square in front of it was merged with piazza della Quercia in the early twentieth century by demolishing the block that stood between them.

History

Building began in late 1548 for Cardinal Girolamo Recanati Capodiferro (1502–1559), by Bartolomeo Baronino of Casale Monferrato, who worked from 1551 to 1554 on the family's earlier buildings; the palace was largely finished for the Jubilee of 1550. The stuccoes were made by workshops under Giulio Mazzoni and Diego di Fiandra, and Tommaso del Bosco and Leonardo Sormani. Cardinal Bernardino Spada bought the palace in July 1632 and set Borromini to enlarge and rework it over thirty years. The colossal Pompey in the Sala di Pompeo was found in 1552 under the boundary wall between two Roman houses in vicolo dei Leutari.

Visit

Piazza Capo di Ferro 13, 00186 Roma RM

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