When Piazza Montanara and its streets were razed in the early 1930s to open the Via del Mare, one medieval house was kept. It was heavily rebuilt, and given a name that recalls the family that ruled this corner of Rome in the eleventh century.
At a glance
The Casina dei Pierleoni is a small medieval house with a tower at the foot of the Capitol, beside the Theatre of Marcellus. It was built in the twelfth or thirteenth century on the old Via della Bufala. Between the 1920s and the 1930s the whole quarter between the Theatre of Marcellus and the Bocca della Verità was demolished to isolate the Capitol and lay out the Via del Mare, today Via del Teatro di Marcello and Via Petroselli; Piazza Montanara, the market square of the countryside people, disappeared. This house was spared, restored under Antonio Muñoz and named after the Pierleoni, the powerful family who lived between San Nicola in Carcere and the Tiber in the eleventh century. It now houses offices of the city’s Sovrintendenza ai Beni Culturali.
Key facts
- Built: 12th–13th century, as a house with a tower on Via della Bufala
- Spared: during the demolitions for the Via del Mare, 1920s–1930s
- Restored: 1932, under Antonio Muñoz; the side on the Via del Mare was rebuilt with windows taken from a demolished house next door
- 1954: an image of the Immaculate Virgin was placed on the tower
- Today: offices of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali
- Address: Via del Teatro di Marcello 5
- GPS: 41.89126, 12.48069 · Open in Google Maps
History
Piazza Montanara was the square where carters, farmers and public scribes met below the Capitol; it was wiped out, with the medieval streets around it, when the Fascist administration cut the Via del Mare from Piazza Venezia towards the Aventine. Muñoz, the architect in charge of the works, kept this one house for its elegant trefoil and arched windows, and because it could help close the edge of the gutted area.
The restoration was drastic: the whole side towards the new road was rebuilt, reusing windows salvaged from the house that had been demolished beside it, the walls were largely remade and the tower was buttressed. Richard Krautheimer later called the result barbarous. What stands today is therefore a medieval house as the 1930s wanted to see it, which is itself part of its history.
What you see
A tall brick house with a square tower, small windows and a low arched doorway, standing alone on a terrace above the Via del Teatro di Marcello, with the slope of the Capitol and its trees behind. The photograph was taken on a rainy day, with the columns of the Temple of Apollo Sosianus on the right of the frame.
Nearby
- Theatre of Marcellus — next door
- Forum Olitorium — the vegetable market, with San Nicola in Carcere
Sources
- Turismo Roma — Casina dei Pierleoni: the Pierleoni family, the demolitions for the Via del Mare, Piazza Montanara, the reused elements, the 1954 image of the Virgin, the Sovrintendenza offices, the address
- Internet Archaeology — Piazza Montanara (issue 31): the house with a tower on Via della Bufala, the 12th–13th-century masonry, Muñoz’s 1932 restoration, the windows taken from the adjacent demolished house, Krautheimer’s judgement
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