Boncompagni Ludovisi Decorative Art Museum, Decorative art museum near Via Veneto, Rome, Italy
The Boncompagni Ludovisi Museum occupies the Villino Boncompagni, an Art Nouveau villa on Via Boncompagni, a side street off Via Vittorio Veneto. Its pale stone facade has a rusticated left section beside an arched portal signed "MUSEO BONCOMPAGNI LUDOVISI"; above, smooth ashlar walls with pilasters frame tall windows with dark louvred shutters, under a balustraded parapet. Inside, five exhibition rooms keep the villa's original furniture, tapestries, paintings and ceramics.
The Villino Boncompagni is an Art Nouveau villa built in the early years of the twentieth century. Princess Blanceflor de Bildt Boncompagni bequeathed it to the Italian state in 1972, on condition that it be used exclusively for artistic and cultural purposes of public utility. After restoration work in the 1980s it was assigned to the National Gallery of Modern Art, and the museum opened to the public in 1995.
The museum is named after Andrea and Blanceflor Boncompagni Ludovisi, the princess who in 1972 left the villa to the Italian state for artistic and cultural public use. Its fashion collection holds about eight hundred garments and accessories, from early 20th-century models challenging French fashion to post-war Italian designers such as Valentino, Roberto Capucci and Mila Schön. In 1996 it gained the wardrobe of Palma Bucarelli, director of the National Gallery of Modern Art from 1941 to 1975.
The museum is closed on Mondays, as well as on 1 January and 25 December. It stands at Via Boncompagni 18, a side street off Via Vittorio Veneto, and the ticket office shuts an hour before closing time. The five exhibition rooms are on the villa's main floor, reached from the arched entrance under the red museum sign.
The museum holds the Fondo of clothes that belonged to Palma Bucarelli, director of Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna from 1941 to 1975, added in 1996. The collection also keeps garments from the Sartoria Paradisi and deposits from collectors such as fashion journalist Maria Vittoria Caruso Alfonsi.
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