The Twilight of Rome's Papal Nobility

Today anyone can walk along Via Veneto in Rome and experience Italy’s famed La Dolce Vita. However, it was once private property, part of Villa Ludovisi, and possessed of an altogether different culture. It was owned by the Boncompagni Ludovisi, an illustrious Roman noble family, descended directly from Pope Gregory XIII. They acquired the villa in the 1600s, and ultimately expanded it to 62 acres. However, by the late 1800s, the economic and social upheaval that accompanied the unification of Italy resulted in the villa’s subdivision, and the family’s loss of all but one of its properties, Villa Aurora, which still houses masterpieces by Caravaggio and Guercino, among others.

The Twilight of Rome’s Papal Nobility provides an intimate look at this family’s life and times. In its pages, privately published in Italian in 1921 and newly translated into English, Ugo Boncompagni Ludovisi recounts the story of his mother, Agnese. He illuminates how she lived, surrounded by almost unimaginable wealth and power, as her public life became increasingly tumultuous amid the family’s struggles to retain its property. In this tender elegy to a bygone era, we follow in the footsteps of the uniquely Roman Papal nobility that shaped the history and culture of both the city and nation.