Casino Giustiniani Massimo, where literary masterpieces turn into images
The Casino Giustiniani Massimo is one of the most amazing places in Rome. It was built between 1605 and 1618, in the late Mannerist style, by Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani, a collector and patron of Caravaggio, and designed by architect Carlo Lambardi. The Lodge is an elegant two-story building with a loggia opening onto a vast garden, and was originally an integral part of the now lost Villa Giustiniani Massimo, which was conceived as a country residence in the city.
In 1802 the villa was sold to the Massimo family, which, between 1818 and 1829, commissioned the frescoing of the Lodge’s rooms from the Nazarenes, a group of German painters who had arrived in Rome a few years earlier and who repudiated 19th-century academic classicism and were inspired by Italian Renaissance painting and in particular by the works of Beato Angelico, Raphael, Michelangelo, Perugino, and Luca Signorelli. The Nazarenes, so called because they led an almost monastic life and wore long hair and unkempt beards, referring to the image of Jesus of Nazareth, produced an exceptional pictorial cycle dedicated to the most important works of Italian literature: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ariosto’sOrlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando) and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).
As if they were true “tales in pictures,” the frescoes are divided into rooms, one for each literary masterpiece. In the room dedicated to the Divine Comedy, it is possible to retrace the journey of the supreme poet, from the hellish places haunted by terrifying demons intent on inflicting ferocious torture on the damned, through purgatory with the penitents aboard the boat led by the helmsman angel and up to the Empyrean, painted on the vault. In the second room is the turn of Orlando Furioso, in which the epic theme of Christian-Saracen fighting is interwoven with chivalric events, with the beautiful Angelica marrying the Muslim Medoro, driving the jealous Orlando to madness. In the third room, dedicated to the Jerusalem Delivered, the romance of the tragic and poignant loves of Rinaldo and Armida and Tancredi and Clorinda serves as a backdrop to the epic of Godfrey of Bouillon freeing the city from the infidels.
In 1848 the villa passed to the Lancellotti family, who sold considerable portions of the property and lost almost all of the large garden. During World War II the Lodge became the mess hall for Nazi SS officers, and since 1948 the building has been owned by the Franciscan Delegation of the Holy Land.
Don’t miss a visit to this extraordinary “secret place” in Rome, where art, history and literature are irresistibly intertwined.
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Giustiniani Massimo Lodge
Via Matteo Boiardo 16 – Rome
Admission + Guided Tour
Sunday, November 3
Time: 11.00 a.m.
Duration: 60 min
Language: ITALIAN