Palazzo Corsini

Listen for a moment. The traffic of the river embankment fades behind you. Here on Via della Lungara, the street is long and straight, and your footsteps echo off plaster walls the colour of pale bread. Cobblestones press up through your soles. Somewhere a scooter hums past, then quiet returns. In front of you rises a long, calm façade, with rows of tall windows, a central doorway and a cornice that runs like a ruler against the sky. This is Palazzo Corsini.

First, a word about this street. Via della Lungara was laid out in the early sixteenth century as one of the great straight roads of papal Rome. It runs along the river side of Trastevere, under the green slope of the Janiculum Hill. For centuries, wealthy families built villas and palaces here. They wanted space, gardens and fresh air, away from the crowded centre across the Tiber. Palazzo Corsini is one of the grandest of these houses.

The building you see is not the first one on this site. In the late fifteenth century, the powerful Riario family built a villa here. Their name came through Pope Sixtus the Fourth, whose nephews held great power in Rome. That earlier house was smaller and more rustic. It looked out over vineyards and gardens that climbed the hill. Parts of its structure still survive inside the present palace, hidden behind later walls and decoration.

Now comes the first surprise. In the seventeenth century, this house became the home of a queen. Christina of Sweden gave up her throne in 1654. She converted to Catholicism and moved to Rome, which was a sensation across Europe. After some years in other residences, she settled here, in the old Riario villa. She lived here until her death in 1689. A Protestant queen who had abandoned her crown, now living beside the Pope's city... Rome talked about little else.

Christina did not live quietly. She collected paintings, sculpture, books and coins. She held gatherings of poets, musicians, scholars and churchmen. Her circle became one of the liveliest in Rome. After her death, members of that circle founded the Academy of Arcadia, a literary society named after the idealised shepherds' land of ancient Greek poetry. They created it in her memory. So the house behind these walls helped shape Italian literature for generations.

In the eighteenth century, the palace changed hands and changed shape. The Corsini family, from Florence, rose to the very top when Lorenzo Corsini became Pope Clement the Twelfth. His nephew, Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, bought the property. He hired the architect Ferdinando Fuga, who rebuilt the old villa into the palace you see now. Fuga worked from the 1730s onward. He gave the building its long, ordered front, a style of late Baroque that feels restrained and almost cool.

Look again at the façade. Baroque here does not mean wild curves. Fuga used rhythm instead. Notice how the windows repeat in steady bands, and how the centre of the building steps forward slightly to frame the entrance. The effect is calm and dignified. Inside, he designed a grand staircase that rises in wide, gentle flights. Visitors in powdered wigs and silk would climb it slowly, and the shallow steps made that slow climb feel ceremonial.

Here is the second surprise. Today the palace is two institutions under one roof. One part holds the Galleria Corsini, a national art gallery. It belongs to the same national museum as Palazzo Barberini across the river. The other part is home to the Accademia dei Lincei, or Academy of the Lynxes. It is one of the oldest scientific academies in the world, and Galileo was once a member. Scholars still meet inside these walls today.

The gallery is unusual because it keeps the feel of a private collection. The paintings hang close together, frame beside frame, as a cardinal would have arranged them. You do not walk through white modern halls. You walk through decorated rooms with painted ceilings and silk walls. Among the works is a Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio, a young figure lit sharply out of darkness. There are also works by Guido Reni, Luca Giordano and Fra Angelico.

Keep an eye out, too, for a strange marble seat known as the Corsini Throne. It is an ancient chair, carved with scenes of processions, hunting and warriors. Its style looks back to the Etruscans, the people who lived in this region before Rome grew powerful. It was found in Rome and became part of the family collection. Next to the elegant paintings, it feels very old and very solid... a reminder of how deep the layers of this city go.

In the nineteenth century, after Rome became the capital of a united Italy, the Corsini family sold the palace to the Italian state. The paintings went with it and became the core of a national collection. The family's great library also stayed here, and it is still known as the Biblioteca Corsiniana. So a private dynasty's taste became public property, open to anyone who walks in from the street, as you can today.

Behind the palace, the old gardens climb the Janiculum Hill. Today they form Rome's botanical garden, run by the university. Palms, bamboo, old trees and quiet paths fill the slope. On a warm day the air there smells of damp earth and resin. Across the street stands Villa Farnesina, another Renaissance villa, famous for its frescoes by Raphael and his workshop. Together, these places show what this riverside quarter once was: a green retreat for the powerful.

Before you move on, stand still for a moment and look up at the windows. Somewhere behind them, a queen without a kingdom once read late into the night. Cardinals walked those staircases. Scientists still argue in rooms above the gallery. Then turn and look down the long, straight line of Via della Lungara. Notice the light on the plaster, the sound of your own steps, and the hill rising green behind the roofs. The city keeps all of it, layer upon layer.