Discover Villa Farnesina

The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance suburban villa on the Via della Lungara in Trastevere, built between 1506 and 1510 for Agostino Chigi — the Sienese banker who was treasurer to Pope Julius II and, at the time, probably the richest private man in Rome.

It was a new kind of building. A Renaissance palace faced the street and was essentially a decorated defensive castle: a rectangular block with a rusticated ground floor around a courtyard. This was designed to be airy and outward-looking, subsidiary to Chigi's main Palazzo Chigi in the city and meant for pleasure rather than business. Baldassare Peruzzi, a Sienese pupil of Bramante and perhaps aided by Giuliano da Sangallo, designed and built it as a U, with a five-bay loggia set between the arms; the original main entrance was through that open, north-facing loggia.

What makes it famous is that the frescoes are still where they were painted. Chigi commissioned decoration from Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano and Il Sodoma, on themes drawn from the Stanze of the poet Angelo Poliziano, of Lorenzo de' Medici's circle. Raphael's ground-floor work — the loggia of Cupid and Psyche and The Triumph of Galatea — is the reason most people come.

The villa now belongs to the Italian state and houses the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, one of the oldest scientific academies in the world. The principal rooms can be visited.

The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance suburban villa on the Via della Lungara in Trastevere, built between 1506 and 1510 for Agostino Chigi — the Sienese banker who was treasurer to Pope Julius II and, at the time, probably the richest private man in Rome.

It was a new kind of building. A Renaissance palace faced the street and was essentially a decorated defensive castle: a rectangular block with a rusticated ground floor around a courtyard. This was designed to be airy and outward-looking, subsidiary to Chigi's main Palazzo Chigi in the city and meant for pleasure rather than business. Baldassare Peruzzi, a Sienese pupil of Bramante and perhaps aided by Giuliano da Sangallo, designed and built it as a U, with a five-bay loggia set between the arms; the original main entrance was through that open, north-facing loggia.

What makes it famous is that the frescoes are still where they were painted. Chigi commissioned decoration from Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano and Il Sodoma, on themes drawn from the Stanze of the poet Angelo Poliziano, of Lorenzo de' Medici's circle. Raphael's ground-floor work — the loggia of Cupid and Psyche and The Triumph of Galatea — is the reason most people come.

The villa now belongs to the Italian state and houses the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, one of the oldest scientific academies in the world. The principal rooms can be visited.

It was a new type of building, and the novelty is legible from the garden. A Renaissance palace of the period faced the street and was in effect a decorated defensive castle — a rectangular block with a rusticated ground floor, closed around a courtyard. The Villa Farnesina was designed to be airy and to look outward: a suburban villa, subsidiary to Chigi's main Palazzo Chigi in the city, for pleasure rather than business.

The plan is a U with a loggia in the middle. Baldassare Peruzzi — Sienese, a pupil of Bramante, possibly helped by Giuliano da Sangallo — set a five-bay loggia between two projecting arms. That loggia was the original main entrance and it was open to the north, so a visitor arrived through a painted room that was half outdoors.

The decoration was the commission, not an afterthought. Chigi brought in Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano and Il Sodoma, working to themes from the Stanze of Angelo Poliziano — a poet of Lorenzo de' Medici's circle, which tells you the register the villa was pitched at. The subjects are classical and secular throughout, in a city where nearly every great fresco cycle of the period is religious.

And one ceiling is an astronomical document. The vault of the Galatea loggia carries a horoscope showing the position of the stars, read as Chigi's own birth chart. It is decoration, an assertion of destiny, and a datable astronomical record at the same time.

It went up in four years, for one man, with money that was not a problem. Agostino Chigi was a Sienese banker and the treasurer of Pope Julius II, and the villa was built for him between 1506 and 1510 by Baldassare Peruzzi, a Sienese artist and pupil of Bramante, perhaps with help from Giuliano da Sangallo. It was never his main house — that was the Palazzo Chigi in the city — which is the key to the design: this building had no civic duty to perform.

The form broke with what a rich man's house looked like. Renaissance palaces of the period faced onto a street and were decorated versions of defensive castles: rectangular blocks with rusticated ground floors, enclosing a courtyard and turning their backs on the outside. Peruzzi built a U instead, with a five-bay loggia between the arms and the main entrance through that loggia, open to the north. The building faces out rather than in, which is what makes it a suburban villa rather than a small palazzo.

The painting campaign followed immediately and never really stopped. Chigi commissioned Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano and Il Sodoma to fresco the interiors on themes taken from Poliziano's Stanze. Because the villa was decorated for its owner in one sustained programme rather than accumulating pictures over generations, the frescoes are still in situ — painted onto the walls of the rooms they were designed for, which is why they cannot be lent, moved or reframed, and why seeing them means coming here.

One piece of the plan was never built. A bridge over the Tiber was intended, to tie the villa to the Chigi property on the far bank. It was never completed, and the villa stayed on its own side of the river.

Its survival is a story of owners who had no reason to change it. The villa passed to the Bourbons of Naples, and in 1861 to the Spanish Ambassador in Rome, Bermudez de Castro, Duke of Ripalta — a sequence of proprietors wealthy enough to maintain a frescoed villa and with no use for converting it. It is now owned by the Italian state and occupied by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and until 2007 it also held the Department of Drawings and Prints of the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica.

What time does it close? 14.00, Monday to Saturday, with last entry at 13.15. There is no afternoon opening.

Is it open on Sundays? No — except the second Sunday of each month, when it opens 9.00 to 17.00 with last entry at 16.15 and holds a concert at 11.30.

What does it cost? €12.00 full, €10.00 reduced, €7.00 for an individual student aged 10 to 18, €5.00 per student in a school group. The phone app is €3.00.

Can I get a discount? Yes, and most Rome visitors qualify for one. A Parco archeologico del Colosseo membership card or a Museo Nazionale Romano ticket brings it to €10.00, and a Vatican Museums ticket validated in the previous seven days earns a reduction.

Can I take photographs? Photographs without flash, yes. Video, no — not inside, not outside, not on the extraordinary Sunday openings.

What is the famous fresco? Raphael's Triumph of Galatea, one of his very few purely secular paintings, with his loggia of Cupid and Psyche on the same floor.

What is on the ceiling? A horoscope vault in the Galatea loggia, showing the position of the stars, read as Agostino Chigi's birth chart.

Who built it and why? Baldassare Peruzzi, between 1506 and 1510, for Agostino Chigi — the Sienese banker who was treasurer to Pope Julius II — as an airy suburban pleasure villa, quite unlike the fortified urban palaces of the period.

Who owns it now? The Italian state. It houses the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, which is why the opening hours read like an academy's.