The Orsini: A Family of Roman Baroni in Context 1: THE ORSINI FAMILY PAPERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES: PROPERTY ADMINISTRATION, POLITICAL STRATEGY, AND ARCHITECTURAL LEGACY

Abstract

Much of the material in the Orsini archive at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is administrative. Among other things, it reveals how the Orsini turned their vast but sometimes unwieldy holdings not only into income, but also into political capital. They did so in the fifteenth century partly by using two administrative tools: a form of long-term rental called emphyteusis, and the pactum redimendi— the right to buy back property after it was sold. This article examines how the Orsini applied these tools to their real-estate assets in Rome, which included some of the city's prominent buildings, such as their palace at Campo de' Fiori, and the Medici, Pazzi, and Spinelli bank buildings in the Banchi quarter. It argues that the family used emphyteuses and pacta redimendi as a means of securing and maintaining strategically important friendships, and traces the long-term impact these administrative practices had on the Orsini's buildings.