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Casina dei Pierleoni

Address

Address: Via del Teatro di Marcello, 5
Zone: Rione Ripa (Circo Massimo-Bocca Verità-Aventino) (Roma centro)

Contacts

Opening times

The building now hosts some of the offices of the Cultural Heritage Office of Roma Capitale.

Description

The medieval farmhouse is the only surviving part of the dense fabric of buildings that had formed over the centuries on the slopes of the Capitoline Hill, sacrificed between 1926 and 1932 to the new urban development of the area.

These, linked as early as 1919 to the desire to give a new layout and decorum to the Capitoline area by isolating the hill, were implemented with the opening of Via del Mare (now Via del Teatro di Marcello) and the disappearance of Piazza Montanara, located between the slopes of the hill and the nearby Theatre of Marcellus. The structures of the casina were in fact included in a larger block overlooking piazza Montanara itself and also incorporated the nearby portico of the Foro Olitorio (the herb market of ancient Rome).

During the course of the demolitions, the discovery of significant medieval structures in some of the walls led to their preservation and restoration in the 1930s aimed at reassembling what had emerged into a complete building. This has partly preserved the original structures on the north side and on the side facing the hill (much reworked with the presence of some original openings and others re-proposed in style) and has been completed by new facades on Via del Teatro di Marcello and Vico Jugario.

The preservation of the casina, however, was probably due more to the need for an appropriate urban arrangement of the new via del Mare - its structures being symmetrically placed with the church of S. Nicola in Carcere on the opposite side of the street - than to a precise desire to preserve a fragment of medieval history whose appearance could in any case contribute to mending the edge of the gutted area. The very name 'casina dei Pierleoni', with reference to the noble Roman family who lived in the area between the church of S.Nicola in Carcere and the Tiber in the 11th century, dates back to the years following the restoration.

Last checked: 2023-06-26 14:20
©2007 - Roma Classic version