Palazzo Zuccari, Rome

The palace in which the hero of Gabriele D'Annunzio's most famous novel, Il Piacere (The Pleasure), lived was 14, Piazza Trinità dei Monti. The building is known as Palazzo Zuccari after its first owner, painter Federico Zuccari, who also designed it. Besides being his house, he also used it as a painting studio, and it later became the home of the Academy of Arts and Design. The palace was built at the end of the 16th Century but has undergone numerous restorations and alterations over time. It was lived in by the Toscanelli family during the 17th Century and, a century later was let to Maria Casimira of Poland. For a short period, it was an inn and used as a meeting place for foreign artists in Rome. During the 1900s Nicoletta Hertz made it the home of the Hertzian Library that mostly contained volumes relating to the history of art, following which it was let to the German government. The decoration of the façade on Via Gregoriana -particularly the door and windows- are what first strikes the viewer: it was designed to resemble the face of a monster with the door as an open mouth and above it a large nose, two eyes and ears. Indeed, this façade is similar to that of Villa Orsini di Bomarzo near Viterbo.