The Farnese palace above Lago di Vico in north Lazio is a monument to the Farnese family and to the Mannerist style.

The Monti Cimini with their volcanic lakes of Lago di Vico and Lago di Bolsena lie about 50km along the ancient Roman consular road, the Via Cassia, which runs north from Rome towards Florence.

Above Lago di Vico perches Caprarola, on land once occupied by goats, hence its name. Today the goats have vanished, to be replaced by a stupendous palace, Palazzo Farnese (also known as Villa Farnese), on five floors, an outstanding example of Mannerist architecture and decoration, elongating its vertical lines for greater effect and dominating the small town of Caprarola. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese started building Palazzo Farnese in 1556 on the foundations of an earlier pentagonal fortress planned by his grandfather, an earlier Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who then became Pope Paul III.

Farnese family

The Farnese family originated in Tuscany, claiming family connections with the Hapsburgs and the Portuguese royal family. In gratitude for their military intervention in restoring papal property by Pope Urban V in 1368 at Viterbo and Montefiascone, they were granted confirmation of their possessions in northern Lazio and raised to the social status of such famous Roman families as the Orsini, Savelli and Sforza.

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Future generations expanded their land in the 1400s, slowly moving closer to Rome, the seat of power and wealth in the Middle Ages, establishing themselves on the shores of Lake Bolsena and increasing their influence by marrying into the baronial Caetani family of Pope Boniface VIII.

It was in Bolsena that Alessandro the Younger, also known as Alessandro Farnese, was born in 1520, his grandfather having bought the Caprarola property in 1504, where he started to build a pentagonal fortress about 1528 before abandoning it when he was elected Paul III in 1534, only a few years after the sack of Rome and at the height of the Protestant Reformation.

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The sack of Rome in 1527 had seen artists leave the city, and it lost its position as a cultural centre, but under Paul III a new wave of projects saw this new Mannerist style emerge. It was a departure from the classical architectural orders and saw unconventional aspects emerge in artwork such as the posture, positioning, features and facial expression and proportion of those depicted, as well as unusual colour combinations. Palazzo Farnese is a prime example of this style.

It was on the foundations of this unfinished fortress at Caprarola that Alessandro constructed the splendid palace, some seven years after his grandfather's death in 1549. He had already risen to power and wealth, helped initially by his grandfather Paul III who made him a cardinal at the age of 14.