VISIT PODOCATARO PALACE

In five centuries, Palazzo Podocataro has had only three ownership changes. The founding cardinal's family sold it on April 25, 1565 (just 66 years after its establishment) to the brothers Ardicino, Costanzo, and Francesco della Porta. They, in turn, sold it after just ten years, in 1575, to Monsignor Giustiniano Orfini, the secret chamberlain to Pope Pius V and a member of the noble Orfini family of Foligno, renowned for printing the first Italian copy of the Divine Comedy. The Orfini family maintained the palace until June 12, 1824, when Alessandro Orfini sold it to the banker Giovanni Corsetti. Through marriage, the palace then passed from the Corsetti to the Alvarez de Castro family. Excluding the founding family's half-century and the insignificant decade of the della Porta, the ancient Palazzo Podocataro has had only two other owners over the next 442 years: the Orfini family and the family of Maria Corsetti Alvarez de Castro. If Ludovico Podocataro and his nephews Livio and Cesare are credited with designing and preserving the palace, enriching it with frescoes (as Livio did with paintings by Perin del Vaga and other contemporary artists), the Orfini and Alvarez de Castro families are recognized for their significant contributions to the maintenance and enhancement of the palace. The Orfini family, during their first period of ownership for more than a century, added to the artistic heritage with a cycle of frescoes depicting the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and undertook important consolidation work on the entire palace. In the 1700s, the Orfini tenants, chasing a foolish modernism, covered all the frescoes with numerous layers of wallpaper and concealed the splendid 17th-century coffered ceilings with canvas-covered false ceilings to lower the high ceilings. The Alvarez de Castro family, second in ownership longevity of the property (now almost two centuries), is credited with uncovering the frescoes, having them restored and preserved, along with the famous epigraphic collection of the cardinal of Pope Borgia and the ancient coffered ceilings that still adorn the noble rooms of the palace. They also restored the secret garden of Perin del Vaga, bringing it back to the splendor of the Podocataro era.