Villa Imperiale is an old suburban noble residence on the slopes of Monte San Bartolo, near Pesaro: a Renaissance monument built in two phases between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the extension designed by Gerolamo Genga.
What to see
The name comes from the fact that the emperor Frederick III of Habsburg, passing through Pesaro on his way to Rome for his coronation, laid the first stone. The first building was commissioned by Alessandro Sforza and, although a «place of delight» outside the city, it had features of defensive architecture, such as battlements (later removed) and turrets. In the second decade of the sixteenth century Duke Francesco Maria I della Rovere and his wife Eleonora Gonzaga, who had won back the duchy of Urbino after a long exile, commissioned Genga to renew and extend the building: a quadrangular block was added, with loggias on all four sides and exposed brick facing. Genga coordinated a vast programme of wall paintings on which, in various phases, Dosso and Battista Dossi, Raffaellino del Colle, Francesco Menzocchi, Agnolo Bronzino and Camillo Capelli worked; among the subjects the sources mention the Labours of Hercules, the story of the Della Rovere and the Hall of Calumny. Behind the original core a system of terraced gardens with water games was laid out.
In 1631 the duchy of Urbino returned to the Papal State and the Della Rovere properties passed to the Medici, the villa included, which was left neglected for a long time. From 1763 until the end of the century it housed Spanish and Portuguese Jesuits forced into exile: halls and loggias became cells and oratories, the roof terraces were walled up and many decorations disappeared. In 1777 Prince Orazio Albani obtained the villa on perpetual emphyteusis from Pius VI; in the second half of the nineteenth century the Castelbarco Albani carried out the first restorations, with large repaintings by Giuseppe Gennari over the earlier paintings, while the restorations promoted in the 1960s brought to light large parts of the sixteenth-century originals. Damaged in the Second World War only in areas without decorations, it was restored from 1945, with work finished in the 1970s; in 1974 the first openings to the public began. The papers of Pope Clement XI, of the Albani family, are also linked to the villa: since 1915, after the sale of the Palazzo Albani in Urbino, the chests with the documents have been at Villa Imperiale, together with a collection of twenty-three music books for lute and other instruments, by composers of the Roman circle between 1576 and 1653.
Visiting
The villa is on Monte San Bartolo, near Pesaro. According to the sources consulted it can be visited from late May to late September, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, by reservation: the information may be out of date and should be checked.
Our editors' tip
Villa Caprile, with its garden of water games, also stands on the heights of San Bartolo, above Pesaro: the two villas can be seen in the same area.
