The Venue
Mattei Palace of Jupiter also known as Antici Mattei.
The venue
The Library is housed in the Mattei di Giove Palace, also known as Antici Mattei.
Reading rooms and offices are located on the second floor, while the Emeroteca is on the ground floor, with access from the second courtyard.
Information services and online catalogs are available both on the second floor and in the Emeroteca.
Paper catalogs and lending service are available only on the second floor.
Book deposits occupy various spaces within the same building.
A sundial made in the second half of the 18th century by Duke Giuseppe IV Mattei is installed on the floor of the Library’s management office (see M. Tschinke, Duke Mattei’s Sundial, “Academies and Libraries of Italy,” 2012).
The palace
Palazzo Mattei di Giove, also known as Palazzo Antici-Mattei, was built at the behest of Asdrubale Mattei, marquis of Giove, who entrusted its construction to Carlo Maderno.
Work began in 1598 and was completed in about twenty years.
The building was the last to be constructed of the five palaces constituting the “insula Mattei.”
Made of brick and travertine, it has facades of late 16th-century form, three stories high, finished with a cornice adorned with the heraldic motifs of the family, and is crowned by a reredos with a loggia
The palace’s two courtyards and staircase are adorned with ancient sculptures, reliefs and vases, mostly from archaeological excavations carried out on the Mattei family’s estates.
The complex of antiquities still preserved inside constituted one of the most valuable collections of ancient marbles among the private collections existing in Rome.
The rooms of the palace, especially those on the main floor, which house the Center for American Studies, have vaults painted by the most eminent artists active in Rome in the early 17th century, such as Francesco Albani (Biblical Stories), Gaspare Celio, Cristoforo Greppi, Giovanni Lanfranco, and Pietro da Cortona (Stories of Solomon).
The paintings that adorned the many rooms and the gallery are now preserved at the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Palazzo Barberini.
When the Mattei di Giove male line died out in the early 19th century, the palace was inherited by Marianna, daughter of Giuseppe Mattei and wife of Carlo Teodoro Antici di Recanati, brother of Adelaide, mother of Giacomo Leopardi, who stayed there between November 1822 and April 1823.
The building is also home to the Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Assets. (formerly the State Record Library), the’.Historical Institute for Modern and Contemporary Ages. and the Center for American Studies.
On the Mattei Palace of Jupiter cf: Claudio Varagnoli, Sixteenth-century heritage and openness to the new in the construction of Mattei di Giove Palace in Rome, in “Annals of Architecture,” 1998-1999, no.
10-11
On the building and the surrounding area cf: Michelangiolo Prunetti, L’osservatore delle Belle Arti in Roma ossia Esame analitico de’ monumenti antichi, e moderni spettanti alla pittura, scultura, e architettura tuttora esistenti nelle chiese, gallerie, ville, ed altri luoghi dell’alma città di Roma.
Tome 2: Of the western part of Rome , In Rome : dalli torchj di Crispino Puccinelli a S. Andrea della Valle, 1811
On the Insula Mattei see: Insula Mattei (leaflet edited by the Cultural Institutes based in the Insula, published in the late 1990s)