Historical building.
The building represents the masterpiece of the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi and is part of a larger building complex, the insula dei Massimo, indicated as the seat of the Massimo family since the Middle Ages (Cencio Camerario and notarial deeds from the 12th century).
The current building, once connected with all the other buildings, branches off inside the block of buildings forming the insula. The palace is located in the IX Region of ancient Rome, or Campo Marzio, later called Parione, and already from the XII century it overlooked the Via Sacra or Papale, called in that section Via dé Massimi (the plural that often emerges in toponyms indicates the family as a whole), and today partially retraced by the modern Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.
The current Palazzo Massimo was rebuilt following the destruction of the previous factories during the Sack of Rome in 1527 and insists on the remains of the Odeon of Domitian. The reference to the columns in the name of the building simply derives from the need to identify it univocally among the other properties of the Massimo, something completely usual in antiquity and that we find in many other names of buildings, such as e.g. always in the case of the same family, in the Villa Massimo alle Terme Diocleziane (i.e. near the Baths of Diocletian) or also in the Palazzo Massimo known as Pirro (from the presence of a monumental statue believed in antiquity to represent Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (enemy of Rome, defeated in 275 BC) and which instead is now exhibited in the Capitoline Museums like Mars).
One of the columns thought to have belonged to the Odeon of the emperor Domitian was re-erected in the 20th century. in the rear piazza dei Massimi, on which stands the historiated Palazzo Massimo, briefly called the "historiated palace", with monochrome paintings covering the façade, presumably painted in 1532 to celebrate Angelo Massimo's wedding with Antonietta Planca Incoronati.
The palace is open to visitors every 16 March, on the occasion of the commemoration, in the family chapel on the second floor, of the miraculous, brief, resurrection of Paolo Massimo, brought back to life in 1583 through the intercession of Filippo Neri.
Massimo Alle Colonne Palace
Address: Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 141, 00186
Phone: 3451167481
Site:
http://www.turismoroma.it/Location inserted by
Bartolomeo Mazzotta