VIDEO | Elevators, coffee houses and azaleas: this is how Villa Aldobrandini is reborn in Rome

Mayor Gualtieri: "It will be redeveloped by the Jubilee. The construction site started last April 11th

ROME – Eighty steps (uphill) divide a little-known green jewel of Renaissance Rome from the road due to its limited accessibility. And instead Villa Aldobrandini, between via Nazionale and via Mazzarino, will soon be accessible to everyone thanks to the works commissioned by the Campidoglio to redevelop the garden and the architectural structures. The construction site started last April 11th follows the preliminary general recovery project of the Villa for a total valuation of 8.3 million euros. The intention is to make most of the area accessible for the Jubilee, while all the works will be completed in 2026. The six areas of intervention concern the vegetation recovery and the redevelopment of the garden, the recovery of the two pavilions, the restoration of the sixteenth-century loggia of original access to the villa, that of the staircase and the adaptation with the lift from the nineteenth-century portal on Via Nazionale and, finally, the redevelopment of the archaeological area.

“It is one of the most significant and important construction sites we are carrying out, this villa is also an architectural jewel abandoned for decades and in some cases for centuries”, said the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, who today visited the villa that runs along Via Nazionale together with the Environment Councilor, Sabrina Alfonsi. “The Villa has undergone many transformations over the course of its history, there has even been a school. Some people go there, but it is steep and without services: it is not valorised. With funds from Roma Capitale – Gualtieri continued – we have now financed the first part which includes three interventions: the redevelopment of the garden and two of the three buildings, the first with the coffee houses which will be reachable by a staircase and the lift and the sixteenth-century pavilion of Della Porta which will allow the main access to the villa with a wonderful cordon similar to that of the Capitoline Hill, but also a lift for disabled people”.

With an initial loan of 2.7 million, the executive project of a first lot was developed, the work of which is underway and which involves the recovery of the vegetation and the garden, that of the pavilion between Via Nazionale and Largo Magnanapoli which will become a coffee house and a lift connecting to the garden, in addition to the recovery of the sixteenth-century loggia of original access to the villa which will become a museum. In the second phase of work, which will start from January 2026, the reopening of the door on Via Nazionale, the restoration of the staircase and the new lift, the recovery of the pavilion on the corner between Via Nazionale and Via Mazzarino and the lighting of the excavations are planned. archaeological.

“This was a Villa with important vegetation essences, so we also made the renovation times coincide with the vegetation time and in a month there will be one of the first plantings that will continue according to their seasons, also making of recoveries. The azalea exhibition, the first ever, before Trinità dei Monti, was held here and therefore in replanting the part of the azaleas, as well as that of the camellias, in reality it is also possible to recover traditions that have been lost over time “, explained Alfonsi, who added: “We are racing to make the Villa accessible during the Jubilee. It will not be a building, but otherwise it will be accessible with the new openings and the new elevators. The villa will be closed for the entirety month of August to speed up the work, then we close the construction sites and reopen them at the end of the Jubilee to recover another part”.

Belonging to Cardinal Giulio Vitelli and a social place of Renaissance Rome, the Villa was acquired in 1600 by Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini and assigned to his nephew Cardinal Pietro, to create what could be defined as the new life of the Family: as Florentine exiles , because they were anti-Medici, to powerful members of the power of Rome through their ecclesiastical career. Following these family events, a considerable part of the wealth deriving from the devolution of the Duchy of Ferrara, taken from the Este family and absorbed by the Papal State, was directed to Villa Aldobrandini: Vitelli’s villa was thus renovated by Giacomo della Porta and here the 339 paintings from the collection of Alfonso I d’Este were conducted, which became not a residence, but one of the richest museum villas in the city.