Palazzo Bonaparte, Renaissance palace near Piazza Venezia, Rome, Italy
Palazzo Bonaparte is a Renaissance palace in Rome featuring two main facades that face Piazza Venezia and Via del Corso, with rectangular portals and windows decorated with shell motifs.
The architect Giovanni Antonio De Rossi built the palace between 1657 and 1677 for the Marquises d'Aste. It later came into the hands of Maria Letizia Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother, who acquired it in 1818.
The piano nobile rooms hold 18th-century frescoes and stucco work commissioned by the Rinuccini family, who owned the palace from 1760. The decoration shows how a Florentine noble family settling in Rome fitted out a reception floor in the taste of the period.
The palace welcomes visitors through guided tours and regularly features art exhibitions in its renovated spaces. Allow time to view the main facades and courtyard during your visit.
The covered corner balcony, called mignano or bussolotto, is absent from Giovanni Battista Falda's 1675 print of the palace, so it was added later. Letizia Ramolino sat there to watch carriages pass in what was then Piazza San Marco, relying on a lady companion once blindness set in.
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