The Fondazione Torlonia was founded at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia with the aim of preserving and promoting both the Torlonia Collection - the most prestigious private collection of Greek-Roman sculptures in the world – and Villa Albani Torlonia, one of the highest expressions of eighteenth-century architectural taste. Together they constitute a “cultural heritage of the Family for humanity” to be handed down to future generations.
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, wrote the very history of collecting antiquities.