Description
Villa Lante on the Janiculum is a Renaissance villa on the hill above Trastevere, designed by Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael. It is one of the best-preserved 16th-century villas in Rome, and today it is the seat of the Finnish embassy to the Holy See and of the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae.
It was built between 1518 and 1531 for Baldassarre Turini, an important official at the court of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII. Turini complained about Rome's heat and wanted a summer retreat on the Janiculum, among gardens and vineyards.
It was not a house to live in, but a place to be with friends, court officials, writers and artists, in front of the panorama. An inscription of 1533 says it plainly: "Hinc totam licet aestimare Romam," from here you can admire all of Rome.
The building has a square plan, with a loggia on the garden with Serlian arches and an entrance facade with a central portico and seven steps. Each facade is different from the others, but the proportions, carefully studied, follow those of Vitruvius.
Giulio Romano and the assistants of Raphael's school also signed the interior decorations. In the main hall a famous graffito has survived: "On the 6th of May 1527 was the sack of Rome," written in the days when the Landsknechte plundered the city.
Pope Clement VII visited it in January 1525, when the most important part must already have been finished; work then dragged on because of the sack of 1527. In 1548 it was rented to Cardinal Georges d'Armagnac, ambassador of France.
The name comes from the Lante family, who bought it in 1551, after Turini's death.
A century later part of the garden was expropriated for the Janiculum walls, and Urban VIII gave the Lante in exchange the villa of Bagnaia and the title of dukes of Bomarzo.
When the Lante, in financial trouble, sold it to the Borghese in 1817, and the Borghese to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1837, the frescoes of the main hall were not included: they were detached and today are in the Bibliotheca Hertziana.
At the end of the 1800s the villa became a salon. The German archaeologist Wolfgang Helbig rented it in 1887 and with his wife, the Russian princess Nadine Schahawskoy, received writers, musicians, nobles and royals there. In 1950 it passed to the Finns, who have restored it several times.
It was built between 1518 and 1531 for Baldassarre Turini, an important official at the court of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII. Turini complained about Rome's heat and wanted a summer retreat on the Janiculum, among gardens and vineyards.
It was not a house to live in, but a place to be with friends, court officials, writers and artists, in front of the panorama. An inscription of 1533 says it plainly: "Hinc totam licet aestimare Romam," from here you can admire all of Rome.
The building has a square plan, with a loggia on the garden with Serlian arches and an entrance facade with a central portico and seven steps. Each facade is different from the others, but the proportions, carefully studied, follow those of Vitruvius.
Giulio Romano and the assistants of Raphael's school also signed the interior decorations. In the main hall a famous graffito has survived: "On the 6th of May 1527 was the sack of Rome," written in the days when the Landsknechte plundered the city.
Pope Clement VII visited it in January 1525, when the most important part must already have been finished; work then dragged on because of the sack of 1527. In 1548 it was rented to Cardinal Georges d'Armagnac, ambassador of France.
The name comes from the Lante family, who bought it in 1551, after Turini's death.
A century later part of the garden was expropriated for the Janiculum walls, and Urban VIII gave the Lante in exchange the villa of Bagnaia and the title of dukes of Bomarzo.
When the Lante, in financial trouble, sold it to the Borghese in 1817, and the Borghese to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1837, the frescoes of the main hall were not included: they were detached and today are in the Bibliotheca Hertziana.
At the end of the 1800s the villa became a salon. The German archaeologist Wolfgang Helbig rented it in 1887 and with his wife, the Russian princess Nadine Schahawskoy, received writers, musicians, nobles and royals there. In 1950 it passed to the Finns, who have restored it several times.