“Ubi nunc est domus Sabellorum fuit olim Theatrum Marcelli" : il Coliseo de’ Savelli da domus munita a palatium columnatum al tempo di Baldassarre e Salvestro Peruzzi.

In the early sixteenth century Baldassare Peruzzi was commissioned to turn the propugnaculum, the small fort built by the Gens Sabella on the ruins of the Theatre of Marcellus, into a new and more comfortable patrician mansion. Peruzzi’s design was based on two main ideas: in the first place, the concave internal façade towards the courtyard; secondly, the pattern of the internal cross windows that originally mirrored the pattern on the outer façade, located above the ambulatory with its two orders of columns. This sixteenth century internal aspect, now lost, of the palace is confirmed by several iconographic sources. Peruzzi established a unique innovative link between the memory of the past and a modern approach, which has meaningful aesthetic, cultural and political implications, useful to understand some distinctive features of a prestigious palatium columnatum located in the Republican centre of Rome, at the foot of the Campidoglio, symbol of the civic baronial power.