Palazzo della Farnesina, Government palace in Foro Italico area, Rome, Italy
Palazzo della Farnesina is a government palace in the Foro Italico area of Rome, 169 meters wide and 51 meters tall, clad in pale travertine. Its facade forms a grid of rectangular windows across nine storeys, with a recessed entrance below and a lower wing to the right. The interior holds more than 1,300 rooms and 6.5 kilometers of corridors.
The building was designed from 1935 as headquarters for the fascist party, but war halted construction. After the conflict, the Foreign Affairs Ministry took over the project and moved in fully by 1959.
The name Farnesina comes from the land once owned by Pope Paul III, born Alessandro Farnese, whose gardens lay between Monte Mario and the Tiber. The travertine facade is clad in a visible grid of panels and openings of unequal size across the levels. The building is often called simply "la Farnesina", a metonym for the Foreign Ministry.
The ministry is a working office building and not a public attraction, so most areas remain closed. Occasionally, exhibition spaces displaying twentieth-century Italian art open for special events or guided tours.
The collection inside displays Italian art movements from Art Nouveau through to Transavantgarde, combining political function with aesthetic presentation. Previously, Foreign Affairs offices were scattered across different locations before consolidating here.
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