PALAZZI OF ROME

The brilliant photographs capture the atmosphere of the buildings in their full grandeur and exquisiteness. They lead readers past magnificently decorated fa ades and guide them through festively decorated halls and artfully arranged gardens.

The text makes clear just how closely the history of the famed dynasties--the Borgheses, Farneses, Colonnas, Corsinis and other old families--is inter-twined with their ancestral seats, and how for centuries the higher Roman nobility designed their palaces in the City of Cities as fitting reflections of their own glory. This competition for the most magnificent residence led to the construction of many of the city's most famous buildings, including the palaces on the Capitol, the Palazzo Farnese, the Villa Borghese, the Quirinal and others, which still today are among the unmistakable hallmarks of the incomparable city of Rome.