Palazzo Farnese

Listen for a moment. Water falls into wide stone basins, and the splash echoes off the paving around you. The square is open and calm, a rare thing in this part of Rome. In front of you rises a long, flat wall of warm brick, trimmed with pale stone. It does not shout. It simply stands there, broad and certain, as it has for nearly five centuries. This is Palazzo Farnese, and it is one of the most important Renaissance palaces in the city.

The story begins with one ambitious man. His name was Alessandro Farnese, a cardinal from a noble family with roots north of Rome. In the early sixteenth century, he decided to build a home that would match his ambitions. At first the plan was modest, by Roman standards at least. Then his fortunes rose. In 1534 he was elected pope, and he took the name Paul the Third. Suddenly, a cardinal's house had to become a papal family's palace.

The first architect was Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, a master builder of the period. He gave the palace its basic form — a great block around a central courtyard, with a strict, even rhythm of windows across the front. Look at the facade now. Count the windows on each floor. Notice how they line up perfectly, row above row. Sangallo believed in order and proportion, and that calm discipline is still the first thing you feel when you stand here.

Then, in 1546, Sangallo died, and the project passed to a far more famous name — Michelangelo. He was already an old man, busy with Saint Peter's Basilica. Even so, he changed this building in ways you can still see from where you stand. Lift your eyes to the very top of the facade. That heavy, deep cornice, the projecting stone band along the roofline, is his. It throws a dark shadow across the upper wall and makes the whole front look finished and strong.

Now bring your gaze back down to the centre. Above the main doorway sits a large window, framed in stone, with an enormous coat of arms above it. This central window is also credited to Michelangelo. The coat of arms carries the emblem of the Farnese family — blue lilies, repeated again and again across Rome wherever this family left its mark. Once you know the shape of the Farnese lily, you will start to notice it in other corners of the city.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The pale stone on this palace did not all come from a quarry. It is commonly said that builders took travertine from ancient Roman ruins nearby, including the Colosseum. In the Renaissance, the old monuments were treated as a source of building material. So when you look at these window frames, you may be looking at stone that once stood in the arena of ancient Rome, carved again for a new age.

Michelangelo also had a grander dream. He imagined a line running straight through the palace, across the gardens at the back, and over the Tiber River on a bridge. On the far bank stood another Farnese property. The bridge was never built. But if you walk around behind the palace to Via Giulia, you will find an arch spanning the street, covered in ivy. It is a small, quiet remnant of that unfinished vision.

After Michelangelo, other architects completed the work, among them Giacomo della Porta, who finished the rear side facing the river. Inside, the treasure is a long gallery painted at the end of the sixteenth century by Annibale Carracci, working with his brother Agostino and his studio. The ceiling shows the loves of the classical gods, crowded with figures, painted frames, and false sculpture. Art historians often place it beside the great painted ceilings of Rome, and later painters came here to study it.

The palace once held one of the finest collections of ancient sculpture in Europe. Huge marble figures, among them the famous Farnese Hercules and the Farnese Bull, stood in these rooms and courtyards. Through marriage and inheritance, the collection later passed to the Bourbon kings of Naples, and in the eighteenth century much of it was moved south. Today those statues are in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. Rome lost them, but the palace still carries their name across the world.

Now a surprise for opera lovers. In Puccini's opera Tosca, the second act takes place inside this very building. The cruel police chief Scarpia has his apartment here, and here the singer Tosca faces him in one of the most dramatic scenes in all opera. The story is fiction, set in the year 1800. But Puccini chose a real place, and many Romans think of this palace whenever they hear that music.

And here is perhaps the strangest fact of all. This great Italian palace is the home of the French Embassy. France has occupied the building since the late nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the two countries made a long agreement for the French to stay. The Italian state owns the palace. The French School of Rome, a research institute for history and archaeology, also has rooms inside. So the flag you may see above the door is the French tricolour.

Because it is a working embassy, you cannot simply walk in. Visits inside are by guided tour only, and they must be booked in advance. You will need to bring an identity document. But the square itself is open to everyone. Turn now to the two fountains. Their great granite basins are ancient, and they are believed to come from the Baths of Caracalla. In the early seventeenth century they were turned into fountains and decorated with the Farnese lily.

Stay here a little longer if you can. In the late afternoon, the low sun turns the brick facade a deep orange, and the cornice casts a long shadow. Children run across the stones, and people sit along the stone benches built into the base of the palace. Just a short walk away is Campo de' Fiori, with its market and its noise. Here, the square feels slower. Listen again to the water in the basins, look up once more at that heavy roofline, and carry this calm with you as you walk on.