Walks in RomeHare, Augustus J. C. (Augustus John Cuthbert)
History
Walks in Rome
Hare, Augustus J. C. (Augustus John Cuthbert)
Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
4. Portrait of S. Filippo Neri, as a boy: _Barocci_.
5. Portrait of Innocent X.; Gio. Battista Pamfili (1644--55):
_Velasquez_.*
6. Entombment: _John Emelingk_.*
Here, also, is the bust of the late beloved Princess Doria (Lady Mary
Talbot), which has always been veiled in crape since her death.
The _4th Gallery_ is decorated with mirrors, and with statues of no
especial merit.
"In the whole immense range of rooms of the Palazzo Doria, I saw
but a single fire-place, and that so deep in the wall that no
amount of blaze would raise the atmosphere of the room ten degrees.
If the builder of the palace, or any of his successors, have
committed crimes worthy of Tophet, it would be a still worse
punishment to him to wander perpetually through this suite of
rooms, on the cold floors of polished brick tiles, or marble, or
mosaic, growing a little chiller and chiller through every moment
of eternity--or at least, till the palace crumbles down upon
him."--_Hawthorne, Notes on Italy._
Opposite the Palazzo Doria is the _Palazzo Salviati_. The next two
streets on the left lead into the long narrow square called _Piazza
Santi Apostoli_, containing several handsome palaces. That on the right
is the _Palazzo Odescalchi_, built by Bernini, in 1660, for Cardinal
Fabio Chigi, to whose family it formerly belonged. It has some fine
painted and carved wooden ceilings. This palace is supposed to be the
scene of the latest miracle of the Roman Catholic Church. The present
Princess Odescalchi had long been bedridden, and was apparently dying of
a hopeless disease, when, while her family were watching what they
considered her last moments, the pope (Pius IX.) sent, by the hands of a
nun, a little loaf (panetello), which he desired her to swallow. With
terrible effort, the sick woman obeyed, and was immediately healed, and
on the following day the astonished Romans saw her go in person to the
pope, at the Vatican, to return thanks for her restoration!
The building at the end of the square is the _Palazzo Valentini_, which
once contained a collection of antiquities.
Near this, on the left, but separated from the piazza by a courtyard, is
the vast _Palazzo Colonna_, begun, in the fifteenth century, by Martin
V., and continued at various later periods. Julius II. at one time made
it his residence, and also Cardinal (afterwards San Carlo) Borromeo.
Part of it is now the residence of the French ambassadors. The palace is
built very near the site of the ancient fortress of the Colonna
family--so celebrated in times of mediæval warfare with the Orsini--of
which one lofty tower still remains, in a street leading up to the
Quirinal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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