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Authors: Eleanor Herman
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the old Pamphili family manse in the Piazza Navona, the heart of Rome. The site had a long and illustrious history. In a.d. 86, Emperor Domitian built a fifteen-thousand-seat stadium for athletic games called agoni . The lozenge-shaped arena was covered with travertine marble and adorned with statues of the gods and heroes. The emperor presided from his podium wearing his purple Greek toga, a crown of golden laurel leaves on his head.
When Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in a.d. 330, the agoni stadium fell into disuse. Enterprising builders recognized it immediately as a free quarry, as most of imperial Rome had become. They arrived with horse-drawn carts, pried off the travertine blocks, and hauled them off to be used in houses and churches.
By the fifth century a tradition had arisen that a fourteen-year-old Christian virgin named Agnes had been martyred in the stadium in a.d. 303 during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian. When the executioner exposed Agnes nude to the hoots of the crowd, the angels made copious waves of hair sprout from her scalp to hide her nudity. But the angels didn’t stay the headsman’s axe. It is almost certain that the fictional Agnes developed from a corruption of the word agoni.
A little chapel was made to honor the saint under an arch in the decaying amphitheater, which in time became the tiny Church of Saint Agnes, located a few doors from Olimpia’s new home. Those who still venerate Agnes’s purported skull today must be aware that something is remarkably odd about it, since it is the skull of a seven-month fetus. But some legends are just too good to let facts interfere with them.
[ 43 ]
Eleanor Herman
By the Middle Ages, silt deposited from recurring floods had raised the ground level of the old amphitheater by at least fifteen feet. Houses were built over the old stadium seats, many of which can still be seen in basements. The square began to be called the Piazza Agona and was further corrupted into Piazza Navona.
Around 1470, Antonio Pamphili came to Rome from the town of Gubbio, 130 miles to the north, and worked for Pope Sixtus IV as fiscal procurator of the Apostolic Camera—in other words, he was a Vatican tax collector. He bought a small town house first recorded in 1367 on the Via dell’Anima, the street that runs behind the Piazza Navona. Whenever a neighboring house came on the market, Antonio, as well as his son and grandson in later years, eagerly snatched it up, knocking out interior walls to incorporate the small houses into one larger house. By the time Olimpia moved in, the residence had its main entrance on the more impressive Piazza Navona and was the last house on the corner, with three sides overlooking streets.
Olimpia was probably not thrilled with her new home. The central location was excellent, but the building was a far cry from sumptuous, well laid out, or airy. A sketch from 1612 shows the house was narrow and four stories tall. It’s faÇade had irregularly spaced windows of various sizes on different levels, and the piano nobile had three small windows fronting onto the Piazza Navona from two small rooms. Many of the rooms were not rectangular but trapezoidal, the result of cobbling together separate buildings in various stages of decrepitude.
The majority of rooms were on the side of the house, on the Via Pas-quino, with another suite of apartments in the rear, on the Via dell’Anima. The rooms were grouped around a tiny courtyard and well, entered from a little alley on the Piazza Navona. The Casa Pamphili, called Casa—house—because it wasn’t big enough to be a palazzo—was a huge step down from the Nini home in Viterbo, with its spacious entry hall, sweeping staircase, and elegant layout. But with her money, Olim-pia could fix it up and decorate it, and keep her eye on neighboring houses that might come on the market.
It was difficult, however, to create a noble showplace on the very
When Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in a.d. 330, the agoni stadium fell into disuse. Enterprising builders recognized it immediately as a free quarry, as most of imperial Rome had become. They arrived with horse-drawn carts, pried off the travertine blocks, and hauled them off to be used in houses and churches.
By the fifth century a tradition had arisen that a fourteen-year-old Christian virgin named Agnes had been martyred in the stadium in a.d. 303 during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian. When the executioner exposed Agnes nude to the hoots of the crowd, the angels made copious waves of hair sprout from her scalp to hide her nudity. But the angels didn’t stay the headsman’s axe. It is almost certain that the fictional Agnes developed from a corruption of the word agoni.
A little chapel was made to honor the saint under an arch in the decaying amphitheater, which in time became the tiny Church of Saint Agnes, located a few doors from Olimpia’s new home. Those who still venerate Agnes’s purported skull today must be aware that something is remarkably odd about it, since it is the skull of a seven-month fetus. But some legends are just too good to let facts interfere with them.
[ 43 ]
Eleanor Herman
By the Middle Ages, silt deposited from recurring floods had raised the ground level of the old amphitheater by at least fifteen feet. Houses were built over the old stadium seats, many of which can still be seen in basements. The square began to be called the Piazza Agona and was further corrupted into Piazza Navona.
Around 1470, Antonio Pamphili came to Rome from the town of Gubbio, 130 miles to the north, and worked for Pope Sixtus IV as fiscal procurator of the Apostolic Camera—in other words, he was a Vatican tax collector. He bought a small town house first recorded in 1367 on the Via dell’Anima, the street that runs behind the Piazza Navona. Whenever a neighboring house came on the market, Antonio, as well as his son and grandson in later years, eagerly snatched it up, knocking out interior walls to incorporate the small houses into one larger house. By the time Olimpia moved in, the residence had its main entrance on the more impressive Piazza Navona and was the last house on the corner, with three sides overlooking streets.
Olimpia was probably not thrilled with her new home. The central location was excellent, but the building was a far cry from sumptuous, well laid out, or airy. A sketch from 1612 shows the house was narrow and four stories tall. It’s faÇade had irregularly spaced windows of various sizes on different levels, and the piano nobile had three small windows fronting onto the Piazza Navona from two small rooms. Many of the rooms were not rectangular but trapezoidal, the result of cobbling together separate buildings in various stages of decrepitude.
The majority of rooms were on the side of the house, on the Via Pas-quino, with another suite of apartments in the rear, on the Via dell’Anima. The rooms were grouped around a tiny courtyard and well, entered from a little alley on the Piazza Navona. The Casa Pamphili, called Casa—house—because it wasn’t big enough to be a palazzo—was a huge step down from the Nini home in Viterbo, with its spacious entry hall, sweeping staircase, and elegant layout. But with her money, Olim-pia could fix it up and decorate it, and keep her eye on neighboring houses that might come on the market.
It was difficult, however, to create a noble showplace on the very
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