FONDAZIONE TORLONIA
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 taste. Together they constitute a “cultural heritage of the Family for humanity” to be handed down to future generations.
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, wrote the very history of collecting antiquities.
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.
Villa Albani Torlonia
Villa Albani Torlonia and its collections of ancient masterpieces were laid out according to a precise ground plan: statues, bas-reliefs and fountains – ensconced between the various buildings and gardens of the villa – rise like a vast architectural complex, in a choral composition of environments, landscapes and works of art that ‘live’ here as if forever waiting to be rediscovered.The classicist dream of Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692–1779), who promoted the growing neoclassical movement thanks to the ‘Cenacle of Villa Albani’ – which included talents of the likes of Giovanni Battista Nolli, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Johann Joachim Winckelmann – was preserved thanks to the Torlonia Family,who purchased the Villa in 1866, enlarging the collection and the gardens and restoring the most important cardinal residence of the eighteenth century, where in 1870 the Capture of Rome from the Papal States was signed.
