074.

Palazzo della Cancelleria Apostolica

The Palazzo della Cancelleria or papal chancellery was built by Cardinal Rafaele Riario between 1485 and 1494, replacing a dense neighborhood of houses like the ones appearing on the left edge of this view. In the process, the early Christian church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso was demolished and rebuilt into right side of the new palazzo. Another view of the palace can be seen as a backdrop to the nearby Campo de’ Fiori, Plate 28, located just behind the viewer. The smaller of the facade's two doors is the entrance to the church (1). The other entrance, whose portal was rebuilt under Sixtus V (1685-90), leads to the rectangular courtyard of the palace which was built over the location of the destroyed church, whose remains were excavated in the 1990s. The left side of the palazzo follows the line of the Via del Pellegrino (3) which in turn followed the trace of an ancient street. This resulted in the irregular plan of the palazzo and in the interesting corner solution where there is a facetted transition from the right angle at the corner to the angled street. Vasi broadens the rectangular piazza into a trapezoidal shape in order to provide a good view of the facade of the palazzo; although not identified by Vasi in this view, the dome rising in the distance is that S. Agnese on Piazza Navona, Plate 26. The piazza was formed by widening a medieval street, as is attested by a 1497 inscription on one of the buildings on the left. In the 1880s the piazza lost its sense of enclosure when the Via dei Leutari (2) and the Palazzetto Galli (4) were absorbed into the broad Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. Contemporaneously the superstructures above the third level of the palazzo were demolished and the bell arch was replaced by a bell tower.