The French Embassy in Italy and Mirabilia Art Wonders, the company that organizes guided tours of Palazzo Farnese, present the opening of the Underground of Palazzo Farnese, which houses two extraordinary mosaic floors from Ancient Rome, for the made available to the public for the first time, every Wednesday by reservation, starting from 29 May 2024.
The French Embassy takes care of Palazzo Farnese, a sixteenth-century jewel where it has been based, together with the École française de Rome, for almost 150 years. A major restoration campaign was launched in 2021 to restore the beauty of the original materials. Martin Briens, Ambassador of France to Italy, announced that “the works will be completed for the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Embassy and the Ecole française de Rome, in 2025, an event for which Palazzo Farnese will regain its original splendor”.
In the specific case of the mosaics, important work was completed in 2024, allowing this space to be opened to the public for the first time (safety works and for the usability of this space). The interventions also included the creation of a lighting system aimed at highlighting the beauty of the mosaics.
Visitors will thus be able to discover two large mosaic floors with black and white tiles dating back to the period between the end of the 1st century AD and the Severan dynasty, between 193 and 235 AD. The two mosaics to which the public will have access are two notable evidence of this artistic technique of Ancient Rome:
The “Marine Mosaic“, which extends over an area of approximately 9 x 4 metres, features horizontal black lines that symbolize the waves, in the midst of which real and imaginary aquatic creatures (molluscs, torpedo fish, torpedoes, lampreys, cuttlefish, dolphins) and imaginary animals move. (dragons, griffin-headed monsters, nereids, sea horses). Under the floor, the discovery of a floor on stilts, the suspensurae, makes it difficult to identify the function of the ancient building, although it is possible to hypothesize that it was a thermal complex.
The “Mosaic of the Acrobats”, stylistically dated to the reign of Domitian (81-96 AD), measures 7 x 5 metres; it depicts four naked acrobats alternating standing and sitting on their horses, all converging towards the center of the room. The theme of this mosaic is exceptional for Roman art, since the acrobatic postures do not correspond to the usual iconography of the desultores, knights who are normally depicted jumping from one horse to another or running alongside their steeds; furthermore, the nudity and the type of exercise of the acrobats of Palazzo Farnese are rather reminiscent of ancient Greek or Etruscan representations, which may have been reinterpreted a few centuries later for the creation of this mosaic. Also in this case it is not clear to which building this work belonged, although the latest hypotheses indicate the probable existence of a stable, a stabula factionum.
The underground visits, organized by Mirabilia Art Wonders, will take place every Wednesday, at 5pm, as part of the guided tours of Palazzo Farnese, exclusively by reservation through the official website [www.visite-palazzofarnese.it], in Italian and French on alternating weeks.
Photo © Ch. Mantuano / Ambassade de France en Italie
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