Palazzo Colonna is a historic building in the center of Marino, in the Roman Castles area of the Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy. Currently, it houses the municipal headquarters of the municipality of Marino.
The palace was built between the 1630s and the 1720s at the behest of various members of the Colonna family, exploiting the pre-existing structures of a fortification that probably already existed around the 11th century. The original design was entrusted to the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, but the current appearance of the building – still unfinished on two fronts – is due to later interventions by other designers, including Girolamo Rainaldi.
The palace remained the personal property of the Colonna family until 1916, when it was given in perpetual emphyteusis to the City of Marino, which installed the municipal headquarters there. During World War II, the palace was almost completely destroyed by Anglo-American aerial bombardment on February 2, 1944; it had been rebuilt by 1958.
History
The medieval period During the Roman period, the territory of the historic center of Marino was occupied by the municipium of Castrimoenium, located, according to some scholars, either at the locality of Castel de' PaolisTorquati, vol. I pp. 159-171 or at the present-day Castelletto ward,Giuseppe Ranghiasci, in Album - Giornale letterario e di belle arti vol. XVII pp. 348-370-385. that is, in the oldest inhabited area of Marino.
The area to date occupied by the palace is located just outside, in a southerly direction, the perimeter of Castelletto, right along the line of expansion of the built-up area during the late Middle Ages, which would lead to the populating of the Coste and Santa Lucia districts. For these reasons, some scholars have been tempted to hypothesize that the Counts of Tusculum -whose lordship is attested in the area of the Alban Hills since the 10th century,Emanuele Lucidi, Memorie storiche dell'antichissimo municipio ora terra dell'Ariccia, e delle sue colonie di Genzano e Nemi, parte II cap. XXV p. 235. and who probably also ruled Marino during the 12th centuryTomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV p. 190Giuseppe Ciaffei, Profilo storico di Monte Compatri, cap. 3 p. 31.- had already built a tower or fortified building at this point on the hill.Montagnani, p. 43
In any case, when the castle came into the possession of the Orsini family they provided for the rearrangement of the entire perimeter of the castle walls, which in just a century suffered three sieges: in 1267 by the Romans led by Arrigo of Castile,Gregorovius. in 1347 by the tribune Cola di Rienzo,Anonimo romano, Cronica, cap. XVIII - Delli granni fatti li quali fece Cola de Rienzi, lo quale fu tribuno de Roma augusto.Gregorovius, libro XI cap. VI pp. 340-341. and in 1379-after the battle of MarinoGregorovius, libro XII cap. III p. 587.-by the papal army obedient to Pope Urban VI.Tomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV p. 205 Thus, one can well understand the military importance of the fief, which was endowed with a new gateMontagnani, pp. 43-44 - Porta Giordana, probably dedicated to the feudal lord Giordano Orsini -, a new urban addition -the so-called Camere Nuove- and the defensive complex at the foot of the castle, along the valley of the marana delle Pietrare. This probably includes the construction-or modernization-of what was called the Orsini fortress, which occupied substantially the same area as the present 16th-century palace.Tomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV pp. 224-232.Vittorio Rufo, L'abitato storico - Palazzo Colonna, in Rufo, p. 127.
The construction of the Orsini fortress can be dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, since already during the period of strong feudal anarchy occurring in Lazio in conjunction with the Western Schism (1378-1417), with the weakening of papal power the fiefdom of Marino was stormed many times by different armies and a new fortress, with greater capacity to resist sieges than the old fortress of the Frangipani family, located at the highest point of the castle, i.e., near the present Piazza Giacomo Matteotti, had already been built.Tomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV pp. 206-208.
15th and 16th centuries
The fiefdom of Marino was purchased by the Colonna family in 1417, for the sum of 12,000 florins,Tomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV pp. 206-216. in a very favorable period for this Roman baronial family: in fact, the Council of Constance had just patched up the Western Schism with the election of Pope Martin V, born Oddone Colonna. It was Martin V himself who went to Marino in 1423, to the bedside of his dying brother Giordano. At that time, the baronial residence was located in the Orsini fortress, which by then had become Colonna, and in a century would set out to become the present palace. Important personalities who stayed in the fortress before it was redesigned include Agnese di Montefeltro, wife of Fabrizio I Colonna -who stayed almost continuously in Marino between 1489 and 1523Antonia Lucarelli, Agnesina di Montefeltro, castellana di Marino, in Lucarelli, pp. 23-26.-, Vittoria Colonna -who was born there in 1490 or 1492-the king of France Charles VIII of France and the son of Pope Alexander VI Cesare Borgia (1495), Alfonso I d'Este (1519), Hugo of Moncada, viceroy of Naples and Sicily (1526).Gregorovius, libro XIV cap. VI p. 468.
Throughout the fifteenth century the castle was the subject of alternating conquests by papal, Neapolitan or Colonnese armies: the climax was reached when in the summer of 1501 the French army marching toward Naples, led by Marshal of France Robert Stewart, received orders from Pope Alexander VI to raze the fortifications of Marino, Zagarolo, Artena, Genazzano, Paliano, Subiaco, Cave, Rocca di Papa and other fiefs belonging to the Colonna family, his personal enemies. Another destruction was suffered by the castle in November 1526 on the orders of Pope Clement VII as part of the devastating conflict that ended with the sack of Rome in 1527.Gregorovius, libro XIV cap. VI p. 488.
Popular rumor has it that, in the work of rebuilding the baronial residence, the feudal lady Agnese di Montefeltro, a cultured woman who had grown up at the Montefeltro court in Urbino, also consulted the famous architect Donato Bramante, who was engaged at the time in the construction of the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican in Rome, and that Bramante is credited with the construction of a section of scarp walls in peperino blocks located on the southwest front of the palace.Vittorio Rufo, L'abitato storico - Palazzo Colonna, in Rufo, pp. 133–137. However, it is more likely that these are a surviving section of the ancient circle of walls of the 14th-century Orsini fortress.
Around 1532, with the beginning of a period of relative military tranquility in the Lazio territories, Ascanio I Colonna, Vittoria Colonna's brother, initiated the urban renewal of the fiefdom, according to a conception similar to that which the Farnese family had at the same time in the building renewal of Caprarola, in the province of Viterbo.Montagnani, p. 46. Thus was conceived the straight line that from the via Castrimeniense -main road connecting with Rome, still today- led directly to the baronial residence under construction, through the gutting of the current via Roma through the upper-medieval district of the Castelletto ward.Carlo Armati, Interventi urbanistici a Marino in occasione della visita di Carlo V, in Il Tesoro delle città. Strenna dell'Associazione Storia della Città anno 2004, pp. 38-44. Outside the walls, the first part of the Colonna Gardens was built, a valuable green area at the time outside the city -today completely replaced by the twentieth-century expansion of the Borgo Garibaldi district-, conceived as a palace garden. The triggering event for this urban renewal was probably the visit to Rome of Emperor Charles V of Habsburg, Ascanio Colonna's father-in-law as the father of his wife Giovanna d'Aragona, from whom he later separated, maintaining conflicting relations.
The design of the palace was entrusted to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger: it was articulated on a quadrangular plan dominated at the apexes by four towers that were also quadrangular, in essence a fortress -compared to the original function of the pre-existing building, but also reminiscent of the Villa Farnese in Caprarola-. In the following decades, however, the project would be tampered with and eventually remain unfinished.
The difficulties Ascanio encountered under the pontificate of Pope Paul IIITomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV p. 219. caused work on the palace complex to be suspended, which was resumed under the rule of Marcantonio II Colonna, famous because he was the admiral of the papal fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The period of his lordship over Marino, which lasted from 1554 to 1584,Tomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV pp. 219-221. was marked by legal reorganization -in 1564 the seal of the Community appeared for the first time,Canestri, p. 9. in 1566 the new Statutes were issued,-as well as the completion of urban reorganization. In 1566, while the new thoroughfare of Via Roma was fully inhabited along its entire length, the palace was only one-quarter completed, and the wide peperino staircase leading from the level of the present Piazza della Repubblica to the atrium level had already been built. After Marcantonio Colonna's departure for Palermo, where he had held the position of viceroy of Sicily since 1577, urbanistic works in the Marino fiefdom were resumed by his successor, Cardinal Ascanio II Colonna, around 1584. Under the rule of the cardinal, who made himself disliked by the population for his authoritarian and despotic attitudes -so much so that in 1599 he stirred up a revolt of the people of Marino, which was violently quelled by the papal government army and the subject of a papal inquiryTomassetti & Tomassetti, vol. IV pp. 222.- the Colonna Gardens complex was enlarged -causing quite a few protests among the people of Marino from whom the communal land used for growing onions was removed,Torquati, vol. I cap. XVIII p. 162. which became the splendidCharles Percier, Pierre Fontaine, Choix des plus celebres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs.Nello Nobiloni, Immagini letterarie, in Rufo, p. 30. private garden of the Colonna family -which was embellished with statues and fountains and with the frescoed vaults of the Casino, a new area of baronial greenery at the Ferentano woods, the Barco Colonna, was also created, and the part of the palace already laid out was finally completed. The walls of the inner courtyard and the rooms facing the eastern front were put in place.
17th, 18th and 19th centuries
In the first half of the seventeenth century, under the rule of Filippo I Colonna and later his son, Cardinal Girolamo Colonna, there was a renewed and impressive building fervor in the fiefdom. The architect Antonio Del Grande, already active at the Palazzo Colonna in Rome and later at the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta in Rocca di Papa, was called to Marino to design the greatCarlo Emilio Gadda, La festa dell'uva a Marino, in Il castello di Udine, pp. 145-146. collegiate basilica of San Barnaba,Vittorio Rufo, L'abitato storico - Basilica di San Barnaba, in Rufo, p. 163. built between 1640Ugo Onorati, San Barnaba apostolo nella storia e nelle tradizioni di Marino, pp. 14-16. and 1662 at the end of the new thoroughfare already inaugurated at the end of the sixteenth century and currently called Corso Trieste. The urban center of attraction thus shifted to the axis Piazza San Barnaba - Palazzo Colonna:Montagnani, p. 48. centrally to this axis, in today's Piazza Lepanto, was in fact placed the monument-symbol of the city, the fountain of the Four Moors, made around 1636 by the sculptor Pompeo Castiglia.