Resumen de L'antico Palazzo papale presso la Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Storia, architettura e trasformazioni
The early Papal Palace of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore: history, architecture and transformations.
The essay retraces the transformations undergone over the course of centuries by the early Papal Palace of Santa Maria Maggiore, almost all traces of which have been lost, and whose appearance in the architectural phase in all likelihood attributable to pope Nicholas V's mind Fifteenth-century renovation can be reconstructed only by a study of the "in situ" remnants, a small number of archival documetns and above all by the more or less detailed visual sources knowns to us.
In the present study, much space is reserved to the analysis of a ground-plan drawing of the "piano nobile" of the palace, attributed to Ottavio Mascherino and today conserved in the historical archives of the Accademia di San Luca. Prepared during an historical phase of remarkable interest, since it only slightly preceded the radical urban reorganization carried out under pope Sixtus V in the area adjacent the Liberian basilica -which led to the partial demolition of the north-eastern façade of the palace, facing the right flank of the church- the drawing serves as an indispensable basis of comparison with images preceding or post-dating the final years of the Sixteenth century.
Divided almost in half by the tract of the via Paolina and subdivided during the papacy of Paul V into several autonomous residencial units, the building owes its present from to successive campaigns of renovation, the most recent of which carried out between the last decades of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
