The Illustrated Talk that will take place in the St Stephen’s School Library at 6:00 p.m. on Monday 23rd March is open to all. Reservation is recommended. See below for details.

For the Walk, a guided tour of Palazzo Farnese, on Tuesday, 24th March at 3:30 p.m. reservation is required. See below for details.

Palazzo Farnese is a masterpiece of Renaissance Rome. It was commissioned in 1513 by Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III, and completed in 1589. It was built under the direction of four great architects: Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, and Giacomo Della Porta. Since 1874, Palazzo Farnese has been home to the French Embassy and since 1875 houses the École française de Rome, a research institute and library.

The highlight of Palazzo Farnese is the world-famous Galleria Carracci, created between 1597 and 1608 by the brothers Annibale and Agostino Carracci, a magnificent 20-meter vault frescoed with portraying the ‘Loves of the Gods’ inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The frescoes, amidst optical illusion and forced perspective, superimpose sculpture, painting, and architecture in a triumph of light, shapes, and colors that have amazed and fascinated observers for more than four hundred years. The gallery in Palazzo Farnese, decorated mainly by Annibale, is still considered his masterpiece and is the most perfect conclusion to a century and a half of pictorial innovation in Europe, before the birth of the great artistic currents of the seventeenth century. In her illustrated talk, Dr Helen Pope will enlighten us about the many mythological stories depicted both from an artistic and literary point of view.

Besides Galleria Caracci, other masterpieces of Palazzo Farnese that are part of the guided tour include the Hall of Hercules with 17th-century tapestries, sarcophagi adorned with mythological scenes and surmounted by sculptures of Roman warships, the Murano Gallery, the Camerino also wonderfully frescoed by Annibale Caracci, the Hall of Possessions, the incredible Vestibule, the Courtyard and the Garden.