Vatican, 14 September, 2023 / 1:25 pm (ACI Africa).
The Vatican this week invited journalists to a special tour of the Palace of the Chancellery, a centuries-old building that the Holy See refers to as “one of the most prestigious palaces in Rome.”
The Administration of the Heritage of the Apostolic See (APSA) opened the building to journalists for a special tour, according to Vatican News, in part in order to offer what APSA president Bishop Nunzio Galantino described as “a less commercial look at the realities that belong to the Apostolic See.”
The palace was built over a roughly 25-year period at the end of the 15th century and into the 16th. It was originally home to Cardinal Raffaele Riario, a prelate known for having invited Michaelangelo to Rome after being impressed by the latter’s artistic abilities.
Claudia Conforti, a professor of history of architecture at the University of Tor Vergata, told Vatican News that the palazzo is home to “some centuries of the most vivid history of Roman art, painting, and architecture.”
The home was built atop ancient ruins. Conforti told Vatican News that the basement houses “an artificial canal that served the thermal baths of Agrippa” as well as the tomb of Aulus Irtius, “one of the commanders of the Roman army in Gaul of Julius Caesar.”
