FONDAZIONE TORLONIA

FONDAZIONE TORLONIA

The Fondazione Torlonia was founded in 2014 by Prince Alessandro Torlonia with the express aim of preserving and promoting the Torlonia Collection – among the most important collections of ancient marble sculptures in the world – and Villa Albani Torlonia, one of the highest expressions of neoclassical architecture. Together they constitute a “cultural heritage of humanity, as well as of the family” to be handed down to future generations.

2020

Torlonia Marbles

From 25 March 2020, ninety-six marbles of the Torlonia collection will be on view to the public in the new exhibition venue of the Musei Capitolini at Palazzo Caffarelli. A historic agreement signed in 2016 between the Fondazione Torlonia and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism, is – as Minister Dario Franceschini underlined – “the fruit of authentic collaboration between the public and private spheres in the interests of culture”. It will lead the Torlonia Collection to tour around the world in several prestigious museum institutions, starting from the exhibition “The Torlonia Marbles. Collecting Masterpieces” in Rome, curated by Professor Salvatore Settis and Professor Carlo Gasparri.

Torlonia Collection

The Torlonia Collection is known as the most important private collection of ancient art in the world. It is an exceptional assembly of works: sarcophagi, busts and Greco-Roman statues. resulting from acquisitions of the most prominent collections of Rome’s patrician families, as well as from excavation finds made on the Family’s own estates.  It is a collection of collections, which, over the various stages of its constitution, defined the very nature of collecting antiquities.

Villa Albani Torlonia

Villa Albani Torlonia has belonged to the Torlonia Family since 1866. It was built during the mid-18th century on the designs of the architect Carlo Marchionni on the basis of a project heavily influenced by key figures such as Giovanni Battista Nolli, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Johann Joachim Winckelmann to house the prestigious collection of antiquities, curated by the latter, of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, nephew of Pope Clement XI. The Villa, with its collection, the fountains, statues, stairways and frescoes, and on the other side from the Italian-style garden, the hemicycle of the Kaffeehaus, constitutes a sublime testimony of the passing style between Rococo and Neoclassicism, that for which Rome had become a key destination on the Grand Tour.

Conservation

The works of the Torlonia Collection and Villa Albani Torlonia, have been subject to constant and scrupulous conservation under the aegis of the Family, which employs a select group of trusted technicians and restorers. Since its constitution, the Fondazione Torlonia has pursued this ouvre and also achieved numerous other important results.