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The #1 Best Value of 107 places to stay in Ludovisi (Rome). Hotel Villa Pinciana. #2 Best Value of 107 places to stay in Ludovisi (Rome). Hotel Savoy Roma. #3 Best Value of 107 places to stay in Ludovisi (Rome). Some of the best Ludovisi / Via Veneto hotels in Rome are: Hotel Golden - Traveler rating: 4.5/5. Deko Rome - Traveler rating: 5.0/5. Aleph Rome Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton - Traveler rating: 4.5/5.

1. Casino Ludovisi Roma Italy Duomo
2. Casino Ludovisi Roma Italy Train Station
3. Casino Ludovisi Roma Italy Milan

Ludovisi Palace Hotel is set in a historical building 820 feet from Spagna Metro Station and a 5-minute walk from Villa Borghese. WiFi is free throughout. On an assemblage of vineyards purchased from Giovanni Antonio Orsini, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte and others, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi erected in the 1620s the main villa building to designs by Domenichino; it was completed within thirty months, in part to house his collection of Roman antiquities, additions to which were unearthed during construction at the site, which had figured among the great patrician pleasure grounds of Roman.

Links to this page can be found in Book10, Map B2, Day 2, View B6, and Rione Colonna.

The page covers:
The plate by Giuseppe Vasi
Today's view
Casino del Monte
Images of the Past
Collezione Ludovisi
Palazzo Margherita
Quartiere Ludovisi (Hotel Excelsior and Villa Maraini)

The Plate (No. 189)

This 1761 etching by Giuseppe Vasi is almost a copy of a 1665 view by Giovanni Battista Falda (it opens in another window). He might have done so because during the XVIIIth century the villa was not utilized and probably the gardens were not properly maintained. As a matter of fact, Vasi, unlike Falda, did not show many people walking in the gardens or standing on the terrace.
At Vasi's time the property belonged to the Boncompagni Ludovisi because in 1681 Ippolita, the last of the Ludovisi, married Gregorio II Boncompagni, a distant relative of Pope Gregory XIII and the owner of many fiefdoms, including some in the Kingdom of Naples. The villa however continued to be named after its founder Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope GregoryXV.
The view is taken from the green dot in the small 1748 map here below. In the description below the plate Vasi made reference to: 1) Casino del Monte; 2) part of Rome; 3) S. Pietro in Montorio and Fontanone sul Monte Gianicolo, which are shown in detail in another page. The small map shows: 1) Casino del Monte; 2) Main Casino; 3) Porta Pinciana; 4) niche with a bust of Alexander the Great.

Today

View over Casino del Monte (the cross-shaped building surrounded by trees) and Villa Maraini (behind it) from a tethered balloon which floated above Villa Borghese before 2009

Almost the whole area of Villa Ludovisi was sold in 1883-1886 to build hotels,smaller villas and expensive apartment blocks. The new development is known as Quartiere Ludovisi and two of its streets are named after the Ludovisi and the Boncompagni; in order to facilitate access to the area, a sort of Parisian boulevard (Via Vittorio Veneto) was opened from Chiesa dei Cappuccini to Porta Pinciana. The Boncompagni Ludovisi retained Casino del Monte, which can be seen only from the air, because it is surrounded by trees and high walls.

Casino del Monte

(left) Tip of Casino del Monte; (centre) fake rocks; (right-above) heraldic symbol of the Boncompagni; (right-below) coat of arms of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi

In 1622 Cardinal Ludovisi bought several properties along the walls near Porta Pinciana; one of them belonged to Cardinal Francesco MariaBourbon del Monte and it included a small casino which Cardinal Ludovisi asked Carlo Maderno to redesign; it was decorated with frescoes including one by Guercino portraying Aurora (it opens in another window); for this reason the building is also known as Casino dell'Aurora (not to be confused with that of Palazzo Rospigliosi Pallavicini).

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica a Palazzo Corsini: Christian Berentz (1658-1722) View of Casino dell'Aurora with Mount Gennaro in the background

Images of the Past

(left) Bust of Alexander the Great (see that inside Palazzo Lancellotti a Piazza Navona); (right) Fons Ludovisia, a small modern fountain, and the ancient walls

The walls of Rome were also the walls of the villa and they stillretain some memories of the past; a niche with a gigantic bust of Alexander the Great was placed at the end of one of the main alleys. The gardens were so described by John Evelyn (1620-1706), an English writer and diarist (November 10, 1644): We went to see Prince Ludovisio's villa where was formerly the Viridarium of the poet Sallust. The house is very magnificent, and the extent of the ground exceedingly large, considering that it is in a city; in every quarter of the garden are antique statues, and walks planted with cypress. To this garden belongs a house of retirement, built in the figure of a cross (..) above is a fair prospect of the city.
Read Henry James's account of his visit to Villa Ludovisi in 1873.

Collezione Ludovisi

Palazzo Altemps: Ludovisi Hera/Juno

Cardinal Ludovisi gathered an impressive collection of ancient statues and reliefs in his villa; J. W. Goethe especially admired a head of Juno, of which he bought a cast: Yesterday, for my eyes' delight, I set up in the hall outside my room a new cast, a colossal head of Juno, the original of which is in the Villa Ludovisi. She was my first Roman love and now I own her. No words can give any idea of this work. It is like a canto by Homer.
Italian Journey - January 6, 1787 - translation by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer - Collins.

Florence - Galleria degli Uffizi: Sleeping Hermaphroditus (Roman copy of a Greek original IInd century AD)

The heirs of Cardinal Ludovisi faced financial difficulties from time to time. In 1669 Prince Giovan Battista Ludovisi sold thirteen ancient statues to Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici, brother of Ferdinando II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. One of them portrayed a Sleeping Hermaphroditus and it was almost identical to a statue in the Borghese Collection (now at the Louvre in Paris). You may wish to see two other Sleeping Hermaphroditus at Galleria Borghese and Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

Palazzo Altemps: Ludovisi Gaul

In 1901 the Ludovisi collection was bought by the Italian State. It was displayed at Museo Nazionale Romano in Chiostro Ludovisi; in the 1980s it was moved to Palazzo Altemps.
The famous group (is) commonly called Paetus and Arria, the Roman Senator and his wife accused of having conspired against Claudius. Arria stabbed herself and presented the short sword to Paetus, with the words 'It is not painful, my Paetus', when he also stabbed himself. Paetus has just plunged the short sword into his breast; and, although his life-blood springs from the wound, he is still supporting her graceful form, now sinking in death! Winkelmann is of opinion that the group represents the story of Ganace, and that the man is the soldier sent to her by her father, Bolus, on the discovery of her guilt, with the command to kill herself; but the idea of the soldier having followed her example is a gratuitous assumption. Others have supposed it to represent a Gaul, who has mortally stabbed his wife and next himself, an opinion confirmed by the mustachios of the man and the fringed outer robe of the female, which, at that period, were not in use among the Romans, and also by the fact that a tribe of Gauls in Asia, as Polybius relates, rather than surrender, assembled under Mount Olympus, where they first killed their wives and children and next themselves. We must confess that we know not with certainty the subject of the group, which, however, is a noble work of art, full of tragic interest.
Rev. Jeremiah Donovan - Rome Ancient and Modern - 1843
Eventually this statue was associated to The Dying Galatian. They both are marble Roman copies of (lost) bronze statues made for Attalus I, King of Pergamum, to celebrate his victory against the Galatians, a Celtic people, who lived on the Anatolian tableland in the region around today's Ankara. The Persian Warrior is another Roman copy of a statue from Pergamum.

(left) Emperor Antoninus Pius; (centre) Venus Pudica, because she covers her naked pubis with her hand, similar to Venere Capitolina; (right) Ludovisi Hermes

A natural horror of mutilation leads men to complete whatever they possess; and thus the statues of Belvedere have received so much modern work to restore the ancient, that we can hardly distinguish what is original from what is added. Either the old surface is scraped into the whiteness of the new, or the new has received the yellow ivory gloss of the old; while the cement which unites them is so imperceptibly fine.
Joseph Forsyth - Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters in Italy in 1802-1803
The Ludovisi had a gallery where their collection was on display. Broken statues were not admitted to the gallery, they were placed outdoors together with fragments of columns, lintels and the likes to give the gardens a touch of antiquity. In 1592 Ippolito Buzzi began his career in Rome by sculpturing the head of Alessandro Farnese on an ancient Roman statue. He eventually specialized in completing ancient statues. In the Venus shown above, the head, the right hand, the legs and the cloth are all additions he made to an ancient female torso. That applies, although to a lesser extent, to the other two statues shown above.

Ludovisi Throne

The principal ornament of the Horti Sallustiani was the Temple of Venus Erycina, afterwards named Sallustiana. (..) Classics described it as standing at the head of the valley between the Pincian and the Quirinal. (..) The temple contained a statue of the goddess seated on a throne; the upper part of the throne was discovered in the summer of 1887, near the junction of the vie Boncompagni and Abruzzi.
Rodolfo Lanciani - The ruins and excavations of ancient Rome - 1897
As a matter of fact the autenthicity of this last addition to the Ludovisi Collection has been debated and the identification of the relief as Aphrodite rising from the sea challenged. Also the appellation of throne does not actually explain the use of this hollow block of marble with reliefs on three sides.

Sarcophagus front depicting nine Labours of Hercules, usually each labour was depicted inside a niche as in a sarcophagus at Galleria Borghese

A number of exhibits from the Ludovisi Collection can be seen in pages dealing with the locations where they were found. You may wish not to miss Sarcofago Grande Ludovisi and Ludovisi Dionysus.

Palazzo Margherita

(left) Palazzo Margherita; (right-above) heraldic symbol of the Boncompagni; (right-below) coats of arms of the Italian Royal family and of the U.S.A. (by courtesy of Mr. Tom Wukitsch)

The Boncompagni Ludovisi had their Rome palace in Piazza Colonna which was known as Palazzo Piombino as they had the title of Princes of Piombino, a little town in Tuscany. When the palace was demolished to enlarge the central part of Via del Corso, the Boncompagni Ludovisi built a new very large palace which incorporated the old main casino; it was designed by Gaetano Koch, an architect who played a major role in the development of Rome after its annexation to the Kingdom of Italy (see his redesign of Piazza di Termini).
The palace became the residence of Queen Mother Margherita, widow of King Umberto I, who was shot by an anarchist in 1900. She was a woman of rare beauty and very popular and the palace was named after her (also a variant of Neapolitan pizza is named after her!). Today the palace houses the Embassy of the United States to the Italian Republic.

(left) Main casino; (right) coat of arms of Pope Gregory XV (by courtesy of Mr. Tom Wukitsch)

The façade of the main casino is now hidden by Palazzo Margherita. Other family members built their homes in the new development; one of these buildings was bequeathed by Blanceflor Boncompagni Ludovisi (external link)to the Italian State. The image used as background for this page is based on the coat of arms placed at the entrance to the building.

Quartiere Ludovisi

(left) Hotel Excelsior; (right) Villa Maraini

Otto Maraini was a Swiss architect who was asked by his brother Erminio to design a villa near Casino del Monte; Erminio Maraini became very rich by introducing the processing of sugar beet in Italy; his widow bequeathed the villa to the Swiss Confederation and the building currently houses a Swiss cultural institution; it enjoys commanding views over Rome.
Otto Maraini designed also a nearby luxury hotel built by a Swiss company.You may wish to see the entrance to another luxury hotel (it opens in another window) in the same neighbourhood.
Read William Dean Howells' account of his visit to Quartiere Ludovisi in 1908.

Next plate in Book 10: Casino della Villa Albani fuoridi Porta Salaria.
Next step in Day 2 itinerary: Chiesa della SS. Trinità dei Monti.
Next step in your tour of Rione Colonna: Porta Pinciana.

Excerpts from Giuseppe Vasi 1761 Itinerary related to this page:

Casino Ludovisi Roma Italy Duomo

The Casino dell'Aurora is the only portion spared from nineteenth-century demolition of the Villa Ludovisi (later Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi) in Rome. Originally the Casino, erected around 1570 and enlarged in the nineteenth century, was a three-story structure on a cruciform ground plan. During the pontificate of Pope Gregory XV Ludovisi the villa and its casino were used mainly for official functions such as dinners for the college of cardinals. The Casino was decorated by paintings on the ground floor and the second floor in the seventeenth century.

The ceiling of the central room on the ground floor was painted by Guercino depicting Aurora on Her Triumphal Chariot. This composition was a deliberate response to Guido Reni's Aurora in the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome. Guercino's coworker was Agostino Tassi who was responsible for the architecture (quadratura) painted in fresco technique. (Guercino painted in tempera instead of fresco.)

In the Stanza del Caminetto, a room adjacent to the central room, the centre of the ceiling shows a wreath of putti, the documented work by Antonio Circignani, called il Pomarancio (1560-1620). It is framed by four landscape pictures painted by Paul Bril, Giovanni Battista Viola, Domenichino, and Guercino. These were produced in a kind of competition between the four painters.

The ceiling painting in the former library on the ground floor, painted by Giovanni Luigi Valesio, depicts crowds of putti with intertwining bands whose isolated letters produce Cardinal Ludovisi's name and title.

The ceiling painting in the Sala della Fama, the central hall on the second floor, is entirely allegorical. The central picture is designed as a fictive opening with only a few figures. In the centre hovers the personification of Fame in billowing robes, holding in her outstretched hands an extremely long trumpet and an olive branch as a symbol of peace. In the lower part of the picture space personifications of Honour (Honos) and Virtue (Virtus) are seated on a dark gray cloud.

A tiny and very low room on the second floor, a space that the owner Ludovico Ludovisi used as a 'studiolo,' contains the only wall painting by Caravaggio.

In its combination of heraldic and allegorical elements, the pictorial program in the Casino dell'Aurora anticipates the pictorial idiom later perfected by Pietro da Cortona in the Palazzo Barberini.

Casino Ludovisi Roma Italy Train Station

Casino Ludovisi Roma Italy Milan