Palazzo Braschi

The palace was commissioned by the papal nephew Luigi Braschi Onesti, son of Count Girolamo Onesti and of Giulia Braschi, sister of Pope Pius VI, who created him Duke of Nemi. The site was bought in 1790 with funds supplied by the pope, and the sixteenth-century Palazzo Orsini at Pasquino — built by Giuliano da Sangallo the Younger for Francesco Orsini — was pulled down in 1791 so that the duke could raise his own house from the ground up. The architect was Cosimo Morelli, of Imola.

The building is reckoned one of the last examples of papal nepotism. Money for it came from the Church and from a testamentary bequest in favour of Pius VI signed by the wealthy Roman patrician Amanzio Lepri, whose validity was doubted to the point that the Lepri and the Braschi fell into a long lawsuit. It ended in a settlement sealed by the marriage of Anna Curti Lepri, great-granddaughter of the Marquis Amanzio, to Duke Pio Braschi Onesti, great-nephew of the pope. Work on the palace stopped in February 1798, attributed both to the French occupation of the city and to the death of Pius VI.

The French took temporary possession of the palace until 1802 and confiscated the collection of antiquities the duke had lately acquired, for which he was reimbursed. A number of paintings were shipped to France in the course of the Napoleonic spoliations and most never came back: a catalogue printed in the Bulletin de la Société de l'art français in 1936 lists among them Van Dyck's equestrian portrait of the Spanish ambassador, Giulio Romano's Virgin with Christ and John the Baptist, Francesco Albani's Saint Francis and a copy of Raphael's Madonna of Loreto, all taken to the Musée Napoléon and now in the Louvre, together with two works — by Frans Viruly and by Bartolomeo Manfredi — lost during Canova's recovery mission.

Building resumed in 1802 and the palace was finished two years later, though it was also said that at Duke Luigi's death in 1816 it stood unfinished with the family funds exhausted. In 1809, when Napoleon declared Rome an imperial city, the duke moved into the palace and was made its mayor.

In 1871 the Braschi Onesti heirs sold the building to the Italian state, which made it the seat of the Ministry of the Interior — and so, in practice, of the President of the Council, who almost always held that portfolio as well. In 1895 a monument to Marco Minghetti was unveiled in the piazza in front of it; Minghetti had been the kingdom's first minister of the interior, with his offices in this palace, and was twice President of the Council. The ministry left in 1923 for the newly opened Palazzo del Viminale, whose construction had been begun years earlier.

After the ministry's departure the palace housed institutions of the fascist regime, in particular the provincial federation of the National Fascist Party, and served as Mussolini's political headquarters; it was adorned with a giant sculpture of the dictator's face surrounded by the word "SI". It held for a time the mosaic known as the Madonna del fascio, later moved to Predappio.

After the fall of fascism and before the liberation of Rome, the palace became the seat of the Republican Fascist Party and quartered the Guardia Armata di Palazzo Braschi, one of the repression squads of the period. From the end of the war until 1949 the building stood abandoned and was occupied by the homeless and the displaced — some three hundred refugee families — who lit fires to keep warm; the frescoes were badly damaged and fittings were stolen.

Ownership passed from the state to the city of Rome, dated to 1949 in some accounts and to 1952 in others, and after extensive conservation the Museo di Roma was installed in 1952, moving in from its earlier home in the former Pastificio Pantanella. The museum covers the history of the city from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

Serious damage closed the palace in 1987. It reopened in part through the 2000s and 2010s, mostly for particular exhibitions, and fully in 2017. The building belongs to Roma Capitale and is protected as Italian national heritage.