Museo Nazionale del Palazzo Venezia

The block-sized Renaissance palace over Piazza Venezia houses a national museum of applied and fine arts within walls built by the Venetian cardinal who became Pope Paul II. Its collection includes paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, arms and silver.

Why it matters

Palazzo Venezia is among the earliest and largest Renaissance palaces of Rome, founded shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century for Cardinal Pietro Barbo — a Venetian who wore the papal tiara as Paul II from 1464 to 1471. The Ministry of Culture traces its later occupants through the titular cardinals of San Marco, popes such as Paul III Farnese, the ambassadors of the Republic of Venice who gave the building its name, and the Austro-Hungarian envoys who followed; Italy claimed the palace from Austria in 1916 as a symbol of national redemption, and under fascism it served as a centre of government. The museum inside — part of the VIVE institute, which also runs the Vittoriano — holds over fourteen thousand works spanning painting, sculpture, ceramics, glass, furniture, tapestries, silver, jewellery, metals and arms, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The building and collection together document Italian craft.

What to notice

The palace combines a fifteenth-century rusticated facade with an arcaded courtyard, setting a model for Rome's later papal palaces. Its collections include sculpture fragments and altarpieces from demolished Roman churches, maiolica services, tapestries and textiles, arms and bronzes assembled from several collections. The Giardino Grande behind the palazzo forms part of the palace grounds. The palace dominates the piazza it helped create.

Context and history

The palace grew from Barbo's ambition after his election in 1464, absorbing earlier houses and the medieval church of San Marco beside it; its twin, the Palazzetto across the piazza, completed the ensemble that gave Piazza Venezia its name and form. For two centuries it lodged the Republic of Venice's ambassadors, then those of the Austrian Empire, which is why an Italian national museum now occupies a building that foreign powers held until the First World War. The fascist years made the palace's balcony the backdrop of Mussolini's regime — the ministry's page records its role as a centre of government and propaganda — a history the post-war museum quietly works around by concentrating on the decorative arts. The collections grew steadily through the twentieth century from Roman demolitions, church suppressions and private gifts. The VIVE institute unites the palace with the Vittoriano under one directorate.