Description
Palazzo Montecitorio is the seat of the Chamber of Deputies, in the heart of Rome a short walk from the Pantheon: a Baroque palace that began as a design by Bernini, where the deputies of the Italian Parliament have sat since 1871.
The first show is outside. Bernini's facade on Piazza di Montecitorio is convex, split into five sections that follow the curve of the street, and down low the roughly hewn stone, with leaves and broken twigs, makes it look carved out of the rock.
Up top, in the center, is the bell gable added by Carlo Fontana. At the back, toward Piazza del Parlamento, the facade jumps a few centuries: four corner towers in red brick and travertine, in the Liberty style of Palermo-born Ernesto Basile.
Inside, the Chamber of the 630 deputies is paneled in oak and covered by a colored-glass velarium by Giovanni Beltrami. Below it runs Giulio Aristide Sartorio's frieze on the history of the Italian people, crowded with men, women and horses.
Next to the Chamber opens the Transatlantico, the hall where deputies linger between sessions and meet the press. Its ceiling, made by Ducrot, a Palermo firm specializing in ship furnishings, recalls the great liners of the early 1900s: hence the name.
The state rooms are on the upper floors. In the Sala della Lupa, with a bronze copy of the Capitoline Wolf, the result of the referendum that gave birth to the Republic was announced on June 10, 1946. The Sala della Regina is where the queen waited for the speech from the throne.
The palace was meant to be the residence of the Ludovisi, the family of Innocent X's niece, and the pope entrusted it to Bernini in 1653. A quarrel between the pope and Prince Niccolò Ludovisi slowed the works, which came to a halt when the prince died in 1664.
In 1694 Innocent XII, an enemy of nepotism, had Carlo Fontana finish it as the seat of the papal courts, the Curia Innocenziana, opened in 1696.
Sartorio painted the frieze so fast that he used a kind of projector, and for some of the faces he drew on slides of patients from the Policlinico hospital. On some open days you can tour the palace with the parliamentary ushers, from the entrance on Piazza di Montecitorio.
The first show is outside. Bernini's facade on Piazza di Montecitorio is convex, split into five sections that follow the curve of the street, and down low the roughly hewn stone, with leaves and broken twigs, makes it look carved out of the rock.
Up top, in the center, is the bell gable added by Carlo Fontana. At the back, toward Piazza del Parlamento, the facade jumps a few centuries: four corner towers in red brick and travertine, in the Liberty style of Palermo-born Ernesto Basile.
Inside, the Chamber of the 630 deputies is paneled in oak and covered by a colored-glass velarium by Giovanni Beltrami. Below it runs Giulio Aristide Sartorio's frieze on the history of the Italian people, crowded with men, women and horses.
Next to the Chamber opens the Transatlantico, the hall where deputies linger between sessions and meet the press. Its ceiling, made by Ducrot, a Palermo firm specializing in ship furnishings, recalls the great liners of the early 1900s: hence the name.
The state rooms are on the upper floors. In the Sala della Lupa, with a bronze copy of the Capitoline Wolf, the result of the referendum that gave birth to the Republic was announced on June 10, 1946. The Sala della Regina is where the queen waited for the speech from the throne.
The palace was meant to be the residence of the Ludovisi, the family of Innocent X's niece, and the pope entrusted it to Bernini in 1653. A quarrel between the pope and Prince Niccolò Ludovisi slowed the works, which came to a halt when the prince died in 1664.
In 1694 Innocent XII, an enemy of nepotism, had Carlo Fontana finish it as the seat of the papal courts, the Curia Innocenziana, opened in 1696.
Sartorio painted the frieze so fast that he used a kind of projector, and for some of the faces he drew on slides of patients from the Policlinico hospital. On some open days you can tour the palace with the parliamentary ushers, from the entrance on Piazza di Montecitorio.