THE HISTORY OF THE PALACE

The palace tells its story

During the course of the restoration and consolidation work carried out in the early 2000s, traces of structures that existed before the Pamphilian buildings emerged, which were first demolished at the same time as the new palace was built and then again after about thirty years, when the modern Collegiate Church was built at the behest of Camillo’s son, Giambattista Pamphilj Aldobrandini.

These consist of masonry walls of regular tuff blocks which belonged to the ancient castle of the Counts of Valmontone and to the original Collegiate Church, and which have come to light and are still partially visible in some rooms of the building. In document sources and in the first inventories shortly after the arrival of the Pamphilj family, we read that Prince Camillo had the old palace torn down, but evidently the demolition did not involve the entire building. Traces of the oldest nucleus that was incorporated into the new building have, in fact, come to light in the basement of the north-western wing, where a large portion of the perimeter wall of a room that was perhaps reused as a cistern in the 17th century is clearly visible.

Of great help in understanding the stratifications of the pre-existing buildings is a Drawing of Ancient Valmontone, kept at the Doria Pamphilj Archive in Rome, which reproduces the plan of the palace and its surroundings before the radical intervention of the Pamphilj family. The entrance to the building was probably on the opposite side to the present one and faced the square (in plan no. 2), while the church (in plan no. 4) was set against the building and oriented north-west/south-east. The analysis of the masonry that emerged during the restoration work and the documentary study have thus confirmed that the building was attached to a structure with a wall texture of squared ashlars, presumably interpretable as a room of the medieval church, perhaps the bell tower, corresponding to no. 4 of the plan.

On the ground floor of the east wing of the palace, there is a section of wall with a small, splayed window which can be identified with the perimeter wall of the ancient Collegiate Church, while on the terrace, which corresponds to the same room, there is another section of wall with very incomplete pictorial decorations with geometric motifs.