Palazzo Barberini Site Features

Raphael, La Fornarina

The portrait traditionally identified as Raphael's lover, and the single most requested painting in the building.

Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes

One of the most violent pictures in Italian art, and unusually for Caravaggio a scene caught at the exact instant rather than just before or after it.

Hans Holbein, Henry VIII

The portrait of the English king, in Rome — a painting almost nobody expects to find on this side of the Alps.

Pietro da Cortona's ceiling

The Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power over the salon: a vast panegyric asserting that the family's power was divinely ordained, and the model from which panoramic ceilings across Europe descend. Stand under the middle of it.

The two staircases

Bernini's square-shafted stair and Borromini's oval helicoidal one, on either side of the entrance hall. Built by two architects who were competing for the same job while working on the same building.

Antonio Corradini's Vestal Virgin Tuccia

Among the sculptures: a veiled figure carved so that the marble reads as cloth over a face, of the kind that makes people put their hands behind their backs.

The Barberini Mithraeum

A hidden Mithraic sanctuary belonging to the palace, visitable on a separate guided tour. Rome has several; this one is under a Baroque palace.

The bees

Three of them, on the Barberini arms, under the papal tiara and crossed keys of Urban VIII — on the facade, in the ceiling, and almost everywhere else once you start looking.