Villa Farnesina Site Features

Raphael, The Triumph of Galatea

One of the very few purely secular paintings Raphael made: the near-naked nymph on a shell-shaped chariot amid frolicking attendants, a composition that recalls Botticelli's Birth of Venus. It is on the ground floor, on the wall it was painted on.

The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche

Raphael's other ground-floor cycle, running the classical and secular myth across the loggia ceiling. Chigi's villa was decorated with fables, not saints, which in the Rome of Julius II was a statement.

The horoscope vault

Above the Galatea, the vault shows the position of the stars — read as the sky at Agostino Chigi's birth. A rich man's assertion that his fortune was written in advance, and incidentally a dated astronomical record.

Peruzzi's architecture

The U-plan with its five-bay loggia between the arms, built 1506–1510 by a pupil of Bramante. The novelty is best read from the garden front, where the villa opens outward rather than closing around a courtyard.

Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano and Il Sodoma

The other hands Chigi hired. On any other site each would be the headline; here they are the rooms you walk through on the way to the Galatea.

The gardens

Formal beds and a fountain on the garden front, which is how the villa was meant to be approached and the best place to understand what Peruzzi was doing.

The Accademia dei Lincei

One of the oldest scientific academies in the world still occupies the building — which is why a Raphael villa keeps mornings-only hours and closes on Sundays.