Galleria Palazzo Spada

Rome's Galleria Palazzo Spada is a small private collection in a lovely palace setting

The 1540 Palazzo Spada often causes strollers to pause when passing by for the fabulous stuccoes on its facade and courtyard. It gets even better on the inside.

While the painting gallery it houses is small, it represents one of the best examples of an intact 17th-century private collection, still displayed in rooms with their original furnishings and decor intact.

The 17th- and 18th-century paintings come from the brushes of masters like Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Guido Reni, Guercino, Parmigianino, Jan Brueghel the Elder, and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Off the garden to the right of the stairs up to the gallery is the palazzo's celebrated architectural illusion, Borromini's trompe l'oeil Galleria Prospettica, recently reopened after a long restoration. (See the big picture above.)

It's a corridor that appears to stretch for approximately 35m (120 feet), with a huge statue on a pedestal in the courtyard at the far end—but it is, in reality, just 8.82m (29 feet) long.

Borromini used columns of rapidly diminishing size (and diminishing spaces between each), non-parallel architectural lines, and a statue rather smaller than an average man to create the overall illusion of a longer perspective and, therefore, greater depth.

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