Villa FarnesinaVilla Farnesina

Villa Farnesina, set beside the Tiber in Trastevere, was built 1506–11 for the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi as a humanist retreat where ancient myth, astrology, and modern wealth could meet. Its airy architecture by Baldassarre Peruzzi frames fresco cycles by Raphael and others, from Galatea’s sea-borne triumph to the ceiling of Cupid and Psyche, turning reception rooms into learned theatre. Later taken over by the Farnese, the villa endures as one of Rome’s clearest statements of High Renaissance taste and ambition.