Galleria Doria Pamphilj Historical Timeline

A collection built by four families marrying into one another, kept in the house it was assembled for.

Chronology

1. 16th century onward — the collection of paintings, furniture and statuary begins to be assembled by the Doria, Pamphilj, Landi and Aldobrandini families, later united through marriage and descent under the simplified surname Doria Pamphilj. Structural impact: four collections become one. What you see today: a hang whose logic is inheritance rather than curatorship.
2. 1644 — Cardinal Giovan Battista Pamphilj is elected Pope Innocent X. Structural impact: the family's fortunes, and its commissions, rise sharply. What you see today: the portrait and the bust that the papacy paid for.
3. mid-17th century — Innocent X bequeaths the paintings and furnishings of his Palazzo Pamphilj on Piazza Navona to his nephew Camillo Pamphilj. Structural impact: a second great collection is folded into the first. What you see today: much of what hangs in the state rooms.
4. 17th century — Camillo Pamphilj, defying his powerful mother Olimpia Maidalchini — Innocent X's sister-in-law, close confidante and adviser — renounces the cardinalship his uncle had conferred on him and marries the widowed Olimpia Borghese, born an Aldobrandini, who brings the Palazzo Aldobrandini into the family. Structural impact: another palace and another collection arrive by marriage. What you see today: the sheer scale of the building, which is an accumulation of houses.
5. 1767 — the marriage of a Doria Pamphilj Landi to Princess Leopoldina Maria of Savoy, daughter of Louis Victor, Prince of Carignan; work on the palace is carried out under the supervision of Francesco Nicoletti, an architect from Trapani. Structural impact: an eighteenth-century campaign reshapes the interiors. What you see today: the rooms the collection hangs in, which are later than most of what hangs in them.
6. 1927 — Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X is placed in a specially designated small room along with Bernini's sculpted bust of the same pope. Structural impact: one room is given over to one sitter. What you see today: the single best-arranged room in the palace, and the reason most people come.
7. recent years — the gallery entrance moves from Piazza del Collegio Romano to Via del Corso. Structural impact: the visitor route changes end. What you see today: the door at Via del Corso 305, which older guidebooks still get wrong.

• Official website
• Wikipedia