Palazzo Rusticucci-Accoramboni, Renaissance palace in Borgo, Italy
Palazzo Rusticucci-Accoramboni is a Renaissance palace in the Borgo neighborhood of Rome, standing on the north side of Via della Conciliazione, the road that connects Saint Peter's Square to the surrounding district. The building rises three floors, with a rusticated stone entrance and a facade that reflects the proportions typical of 16th-century Roman residential architecture.
Cardinal Girolamo Rusticucci commissioned architects Domenico Fontana and Carlo Maderno toward the end of the 16th century to merge several existing buildings into one residence. The result was one of the few large private homes in the Vatican area assembled from a series of older structures.
The palace gave its name to Piazza Rusticucci, the square that served as a forecourt to Saint Peter's Basilica after Bernini's colonnades were built in 1667. In 1775 the Caffè San Pietro, one of Rome's oldest coffee houses, opened in a ground-floor shop. The bakery on the site was originally an osteria where Raphael and his assistants sketched solutions to work problems on the walls during lunch.
The palace's main facade faces south onto Via della Conciliazione, on the north side of the avenue, in the same block as Palazzo dei Convertendi. To the west, the short Via Rusticucci separates it from the northern propylaea of Piazza Pio XII, which faces Saint Peter's Square. The building can be viewed from the public street; it is a private property, not a museum open to visitors.
During construction, an elderly resident refused to sell her home, so the architects had no choice but to build around it and incorporate it into the new structure. This compromise is said to still be traceable in the irregular layout of part of the building.
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