Palazzo Zuccari

We’ve made a slight detour here to show you the striking Palazzo Zuccari. Let’s face it, it’s not every day you get to see a building entrance shaped like a wide-open mouth of a monster. This spooky, narrow house, also known as the “House of Monsters,” was built in 1591 for painter Federico Zuccari, who sadly didn’t live to see it finished. When he died, he bequeathed the house to the Academy of Saint Luke, an art school in Rome that he had founded 30 years earlier. The three monster mascarons above the door and two windows were actually designed by Zuccari himself. He wanted guests to feel all the feels, to be both amazed and frightened. It might take you a moment to cross the threshold, but you’re sure to be spellbound by the dreamlike garden on the other side. The building was not owned by the Academy of Saint Luke for long. In 1702, the Queen of Poland moved in and even added a small private theater. In 1756, it became the seat of a religious institute run by the Holy See, before being converted into an artists’ inn. Today, the Palazzo Zuccari houses the Hertzian Library, a German research institute with a focus on art history. It houses over 300,000 books and 800,000 photographs, making it one of the world’s most important documentation centers dedicated to Italian art.