The Orsini estates were at Bracciano, Anguillara, and Galera, but the
Bracciano property with the ducal title that went with it now belongs
to the Odescalchi. In Rome the Orsini still own and inhabit their
great palace near the portico of Octavia. It was designed by
Baldassare Peruzzi and was built within the ruins of the theatre of
Marcellus, the high ground upon which it stands being merely a heap of
fallen debris. It is approached through a gateway flanked by stone
bears, the emblem of the Orsini race.
Another mediaeval family, the Gaetani or Caetani, Dukes of Sermoneta
and Princes of Caserta and Teano, is of Neapolitan origin. One of its
members became pope as Gelasius II. in 1118 and the first of the name
was military prefect under Manfred, King of Sicily, but the close
union of this family with Rome only dates from the reign of the
Gaetani pope, Boniface VIII. It was at this period also that the tomb
of Cecilia Metella on the Appian Way was disguised with turrets and
battlements to serve the Gaetani as an outlying stronghold against
their enemies.
Of all the princely names which figure in the records of mediaeval
Rome, none can claim a more venerable antiquity than the Annibaldi,
the Massimo, and the Cenci. The first, of the race of the great
Hannibal, are no longer extant. The Massimi, who derive their name
from the ancient family of Maximus, are Dukes of Rignano, Princes of
Roviano, and heirs to many other titles; they are still amongst the
greatest of Rome. The present prince lives in the family palace in the
Corso Vittorio Emanuele familiar to every tourist from its curved
facade and rows of columns, and still keeps up much of the princely
state and ceremony of a past age. The Cenci have become extinct in the
male line and the name is carried on by a distant branch as
Cenci-Bolognetti.
This family is first heard of in the person of Marcus Cencius, Prefect
of Pisa in the year 457 of Rome; and in 914 Johannes Cencius was
elected Pope as John X. In 1692 the Cenci were created Princes of
Vicovaro, a little mountain town in the Sabines, and in 1723 they
acquired the title and estates of Bolognetti by the marriage of
Virginius with an heiress of that name. With her came into the family
the dower-house, the graceful Palazzo Bolognetti-Cenci still standing
in the Piazza Pantaleone. The Bolognetti palace in the Piazza di
Venezia was sold to Prince Torlonia, and has just been destroyed to
make way for the colossal monument to Victor Emmanuel which is to
preside over Rome from the Capitol hill. The old Cenci palace, a few
years ago empty and deserted, but now government property, stands in
what was once the Jews' quarter of Rome, a forbidding pile eloquent of
its owner's tragic history. The family chapel close to it, San Tommaso
a' Cenci, dates from 1113 and was built by a Cenci who was Bishop of
Sabina at that time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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