Pamphilj Palace (Albano)

History

The realization of the trident of Albano as a set of three straight roads converging at a single point was promoted by Cardinal Paolo Savelli, commendatory abbot of St. Paul's Abbey, taking advantage of the lands owned by the abbey. As early as 1282, Cardinal Giacomo Savelli, since 1285 Pope Honorius IV, had built the abbey complex of St. Paul's, endowing it with substantial properties in the Albanese territory and around Lake Albano (such as the picturesque hermitage of Sant'Angelo in Lacu). The trident of roads was articulated as an urbanistic expansion of the city, hitherto restricted horizontally along the route of the decayed Via Appia Antica, which grafted onto today's Corso Alcide de Gasperi and developed with three roads that connected the strategic points of the city to the Abbey of St. Paul: the current Via Leonardo Murialdo (the "third street" of the Gregorian cadastre) with the cathedral basilica of San Pancrazio, the current Via San Gaspare del Bufalo (the "second street" of the Gregorian cadastre) with the shrine of Santa Maria della Rotonda, and the current Via Aurelio Saffi (the "first street" of the Gregorian cadastre) with the Via Appia and, slightly wrong-footing it, with Palazzo Savelli. The first building erected in the new expansion (the "Borgo Nuovo," today's Borgo San Paolo) was a country house built by Cardinal Vincenzo Maculani, a Dominican military engineer in papal service, between 1657 and 1662. The annual rent he had to pay to the Abbey of San Paolo, owner of the land, amounted to two pounds of wax (about 600 grams). Next to this palace, built at the corner of the square and today's Via Murialdo and Via San Gaspare del Bufalo, on the downstream side rose the country house of the Bottini marquises.

Later, the "trident" was occupied by new aristocratic palaces: Rospigliosi palace, built in 1667 opposite the Maculani casino (today it houses the "Leonardo Murialdo" paritarian institute and the Giuseppini fathers' college) and the Nuñex casino on Piazza San Paolo, the palace of Cardinal Bernardino Giraud (1721-1782) and the neoclassical Croci palace on today's Via Aurelio Saffi. …

Description

The palace gradually developed by expansions, starting from the "head" on St. Paul's Square (Filippo Leti, 1708-1711) to the stallions on the courtyard "of the cavallerizza" (Carlo Stefano Fontana, 1717), via the spiral staircase (Simone Costanzi 1708-1709, Filippo Leti 1709-1711) and the wings "toward the sea" (Carlo Stefano Fontana, 1717), looming over Via San Gaspare del Bufalo and Via Leonardo Murialdo, respectively.

The layout given to the building by the interventions commissioned by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj and his heirs until 1764 is that of a princely holiday palace, characteristic of 18th-century Rome. The arrangement of the rooms and furniture according to this use is testified by the inventories of 1708 (prior to the extension works, thus referring to the Maculani and Bottini casini), 1725, 1747 and 1761. With the purchase by the Piarist Fathers of the Nazarene College in 1764, the purpose of the palace changed, converted to educational use, and the layout of the rooms also changed, although their furnishings remained largely the 18th-century ones belonging to Cardinal Pamphilj: dormitories for pupils and rooms for the religious were made, as the inventories of 1779 and the last inventory, of 1900, testify.

The construction

In the ponderous study by Marco Silvestri and Enzo D'Ambrosio ("Palazzo Pamphilj in Albano Laziale," Rome 1988), the building site for the reconstruction and augmentation of the palace is cited as a significant example of a way of building that no longer exists today. The two scholars, reading the very detailed "construction diaries" from 1777 to 1900 preserved in the archives of the Nazarene College in Rome, brought to light the whole "noisy panorama of men intent on working artfully, according to ancient techniques," where "there hovered a deep sense of humanity now unusual to us."

At the head of the building site was the architect, who could serve for a regular salary or, as in the case of the architect Tarquini who directed the 1777 work, be paid regularly by the client for other functions (Tarquini was a teacher at the Nazarene College). He was responsible for taking care of the supply of materials for the construction and occasionally supervising the work: the one who was always present on the site was the foreman, who chose the masons and artisans to be employed in the work, destined for the most disparate roles: from being sent "with a donkey to Palestrina to look for lime" to "[carting] water to dampen the lime" to "[transporting] to Rome three jars of paint, boiled oil, plaster, wine for the Fr. Rector."

One of the most delicate and longest-lasting operations carried out on the site was the re-roofing and re-ceiling after the building was raised in 1777. The lumber from the demolished roofs was re-plastered and used as "chord" (horizontal beam) in the new roofs: the "paradoxes" (oblique beams that weighed on the chords) were instead specially made. The supply of lumber, provided from time to time as it was needed to prevent fires at the building, was provided in the woods of the Alban Hills, where there was an abundance of chestnut, poplar, and elm: large-cut lumber came from Fajola, between Genzano di Roma, Velletri, and Nemi, while small-cut lumber came from Molara, at the foot of the Tuscolo. …