Villa Ludovisi
The Villa Ludovisi , full name Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi, was a garden in Rome .
The Villa Ludovisi was located in what is now Ludovisi . The villa was built in the 17th century in the area where the Horti Sallustiani once stood near the Porta Salaria . Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon Del Monte , Giovanni Antonio Orsini and other Roman nobles acquired the site and Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi built the main building there in the 1620s, designed by Domenichino to house the Ludovisi collection . The works of art in this collection included Pluto and Persephone by Gian Lorenzo Bernini . The frescoes in the villa were created by Domenichino, Guercino , Alessandro Algardi , Giovambattista Viola and other artists. The gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre and a pavilion was built for the installation of further statues. In 1828, the French writer Stendhal described the gardens as one of the most beautiful ones that existed in its time.
The villa with gardens was inherited by the Boncompagni-Ludovisi family and rented to the Italian King Victor Emanuel II in 1872 , who housed his lover and later second wife Rosa Vercellana there. In 1886, the last owner of the Ludovisi family, Don Rudolfo Boncompagni Ludovisi, Prince of Piombino , sold the spacious Villa Ludovisi to the Rome-owned company Società Generale Immobiliare , who built a new residential area there. The gardens are crossed by today's famous Via Veneto . Of the buildings in this complex, only the Boncompagni Ludovisi casino remained. The Palazzo Margherita , which is now the US Embassy, was built on parts of the garden between 1886 and 1890 .
literature
- Stendhal : Promenades dans Rome (April 18, 1828), in: Voyages en Italie
- Theodor Schreiber : The ancient sculptures of the Villa Ludovisi , Rome 1880
- I. Belli Barsale: Ville di Roma , Volume 3, 1st Milan 1970
- A. Schiavo: Villa Ludovisi e Palazzo Margherita , Rome 1981
- DR Coffin: Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome , Princeton 1991