Villa Doria Pamphili Site Features

The Casino del Bel Respiro

Built 1645–1647 for the family of Innocent X, to a project placed in the hands of the sculptor Alessandro Algardi with Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi assisting. Bought by the Italian State in 1957 and used as the seat of a Ministry. Wikipedia states that its collection of antiquities and sculptures is today open to the public as a museum — but no operator publishes visiting hours, and the building is in government use, so do not travel expecting to get in.

The Giardino Segreto

The formal box parterre below the Casino, with lemon trees in pots. In 180 hectares of woodland and meadow it is the one place that still looks like a seventeenth-century villa garden, and it is the obvious target for a visit.

The size

The largest landscaped public park in Rome. Wikipedia gives 1.8 km²; Turismo Roma gives 184 hectares as the present extent. Either way it is big enough that the gate you choose decides your afternoon.

The five gates

Via Aurelia Antica, via Leone XIII (via Olimpica), via della Nocetta, via Vitellia, via di Porta San Pancrazio. They are widely separated. San Pancrazio is the one for anyone arriving on foot from Trastevere or the Janiculum.

The Olympic road and the Jubilee bridge

The two sections of the extended grounds are divided by a road built for the Olympic Games of 1960. For the Jubilee Year of 2000 a curved and arching pedestrian bridge was built to join them.

The 1849 ground

The Villa lay near the scene of some of the fiercest hand-to-hand combat of the defence of Rome, by the Porta San Pancrazio; the neighbouring Villa Corsini was destroyed in the French bombardment.

What the council provides

A dog area near the via Leone XIII 75 entrance, cycle-and-pedestrian routes marked by signage, and accessible entrances.