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.
