The history of the palace itself is not without interest, for it shows how property, which was not in the possession of the original Barons, sometimes passed from hand to hand, changing names with each new owner, in the rise and fall of fortunes in those times. The first building seems to have belonged to the Chapter of Santa Maria Maggiore, which somehow ceded it to Cardinal Santorio, who spent an immense sum in rebuilding, extending and beautifying it. When it was almost finished, Julius the Second came to see it, and after expressing the highest admiration for the work, observed that such a habitation was less fitting for a prince of the church than for a secular duke--meaning, by the latter, his own nephew, Francesco della Rovere, then Duke of Urbino; and the unfortunate Santorio, who had succeeded in preserving his possessions under the domination of the Borgia, was forced to offer the most splendid palace in Rome as a gift to the person designated by his master. He died of a broken heart within the year. A hundred years later, the Florentine Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement the Eighth, bought it from the Dukes of Urbino for twelve thousand measures of grain, furnished them for the purpose by their uncle, and finally, when it had fallen in inheritance to Donna Olimpia Aldobrandini, Innocent the Tenth married her to his nephew, Camillo Pamfili, from whom, by the fusion of the two families, it at last came into the hands of the Doria-Pamfili. The Doria palace is almost two-thirds of the size of Saint Peter's, and within the ground plan of Saint Peter's the Colosseum could stand. It used to be said that a thousand persons lived under the roof outside of the gallery and the private apartments, which alone surpass in extent the majority of royal residences. Without some such comparison mere words can convey nothing to a mind unaccustomed to such size and space, and when the idea is grasped, one asks, naturally enough, how the people lived who built such houses--the people whose heirs, far reduced in splendour, if not in fortune, are driven to let four-fifths of their family mansion, because they find it impossible to occupy more rooms than suffice the Emperor of Germany or the Queen of England. One often hears foreign visitors, ignorant of the real size of palaces in Rome, observe, with contempt, that the Roman princes 'let their palaces.' It would be more reasonable to inquire what use could be made of such buildings, if they were not let, or how any family could be expected to inhabit a thousand rooms, and, ultimately, for what purpose such monstrous residences were ever built at all.