Galleria Spada

The draw

There is a colonnade in the courtyard that is not the length it appears to be, and standing on its axis is one of the strangest few seconds in Rome. Borromini built it in 1653, helped with the mathematics by the Augustinian father Giovanni Maria da Bitonto: the columns shrink, the floor rises, the vault drops, and an arcade of about eight metres reads as a gallery of thirty-seven, with a warrior at the end who looks life-size and is, according to Wikipedia, sixty centimetres high. Attached to it is a four-room picture gallery hung the way a seventeenth-century cardinal hung pictures — frame against frame, floor to ceiling — which is now rarer than any single painting in it.

The friction

It is small, and it closes on Tuesday. An hour covers everything. The Tuesday closure is the real trap: nearly every other state museum in Rome shuts on Monday, so the day you have set aside for galleries is the day this one is open and the day after is the one it is not.

The tactic

Go to the courtyard first and stand on the axis before you do anything else, because once you have seen the colonnade from an angle you cannot unsee the trick. Then the four rooms, which take about forty minutes. It is a few minutes' walk from Campo de' Fiori, costs EUR 6, and is free on the first Sunday of the month.

Skip it if you:

• Are here on a Tuesday. Closed — the one Roman state gallery that is.
• Want a big collection. Four rooms. An hour. It is a cabinet, not a museum.
• Are hoping to walk down the colonnade. You look at it from the courtyard; entering is not part of the visit.
• Arrive after 19.00. The ticket office shuts half an hour before the gallery does.
• Have no interest in seventeenth-century painting. Then you are coming for one courtyard view, and should price the ticket accordingly.

Do not walk into the colonnade. It is viewed from the courtyard end; entering it both breaks the illusion for everyone else waiting and puts you inside a seventeenth-century structure built to deceive rather than to carry traffic.

Take your turn on the axis. The effect only exists from one position, so the courteous thing in a small courtyard is to look, photograph, and step aside.

It is a working government building. The Council of State occupies the rest of Palazzo Spada; the gallery and courtyard are the visitable part and the signage marks where that ends.

Opening hours

08.30-19.30. CLOSED TUESDAYS.

That is worth repeating, because it is the opposite of the Roman norm: most state museums here close on Monday. Galleria Spada is open on Mondays and shut on Tuesdays.

The ticket office closes at 19.00, half an hour before the gallery does.

Tickets

EUR 6 full, EUR 2 reduced. Free on the first Sunday of each month.

Booking

Individual visitors do not need to reserve. Booking is obligatory for groups of more than six; schools and groups book through galleriaspada@artem.org or +39 06 68 32 409.

What you can see

The four gallery rooms and the courtyard with Borromini's colonnade. Palazzo Spada also houses the Council of State, so the rest of the building is not open to visitors.

How long

About an hour: forty minutes for the four rooms and as long as you like standing on the axis of the colonnade.

What is free

The courtyard is not. This is worth being exact about, because the colonnade is visible from inside the palace courtyard and people assume a palace courtyard is public space: the perspective is part of the ticketed visit. What is free is the first Sunday of each month, when the whole gallery is, and the street facade on Piazza Capo di Ferro, which is a genuinely good piece of sixteenth-century stucco in its own right.

Ticket & Pass Decision Matrix

At the gate: the gallery runs to 19.30 but the ticket office closes at 19.00, so the last half hour belongs to people already inside. Closed Tuesdays.

Any day but Tuesday. This is the one Roman gallery where that sentence is the practical advice, because the Monday closure that applies almost everywhere else does not apply here.

Middle of the day for the colonnade. It is a roofed arcade opening off an enclosed courtyard, and the illusion depends on seeing the far end clearly; the light reaching the end of the arcade is best when the sun is high. Early morning and the last hour leave it dim.

The first Sunday of the month is free and therefore busier, which matters more here than at a large museum: the colonnade works from one spot, and a queue for that spot changes the experience.