The intervention of the architect Antonio Celles in the reformations of the Palace of Spain in Rome (1814-1815)

Abstract

The Palazzo di Spagna, located in the homonymous square of Rome, and place of the Spanish Embassy in the Vatican, has belonged to the Spanish Government from the 17th Century to our days. Its architecture, of Renaissance origin, suffered important transformations in the first years of the 19th Century that determined its current aspect. Traditionally, the bibliography attributed these reformations to Antonio Celles, Catalan architected protected by Manuel Godoy, and resident in Rome between 1803 and 1815; but in recent dates, the publication of an architectural plan of the palace’s facade, dated in 1812, has allowed to know its real author, the French Adrien Pâris. However, the deplorable state of conservation of the embassy in 1814 forced Fernando VII to approve some maintenance works, managed by Antonio Celles, and completed in the following years by other Italian architects as Giuseppe and Giuliano Camporese. During the first half of the 19th Century, other Spanish artists as the painter Jose de Madrazo, or the architect Martin Lopez Aguado, contributed to renovate the palace by means of their reports about its pitiful conservation.