Palazzo Ciantes a Tivoli (1662-1665). La trasformazione e il riuso di un piccolo convento agostiniano (con un’appendice documentaria)

This essay originates from the author's graduate thesis (2007), enriched in the following years through further archival researches. The matter is Palazzo Ciantes, located in Tivoli, former seat of the Monte di Pietà. Analizing the metro-typological features of the building, and the and masonry discontinuity, the author has identified, in the architectonic palimpsest, the pre-existing structures of a Church and of its convent, dedicate to San Leonardo. Both building were suppressed in 1652 in compliance with the famous bull of pope Innocent X "Instaurandae regularis disciplinae". Ten years later, the buildings were bought by Lorenzo Ciantes, a member of a Roman aristocratic family, who made it a holiday-residence for himself and his brothers, Msgr. Ignazio and Msgr. Giuseppe Maria. The palace subsequently passed to the monastery of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, then to the Cenci Bolognetti family, who kept it until the late nineteenth century, when it was purchased by the Monte di Pietà of Rome, which installed its branch in Tivoli. The sober appearance given to the building is framed within the late seventeenth-century classicism, in that tendency to simplify the main themes of the Baroque, already performed by Bernini's disciples, among whom could be identified the author of this work.