mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
By the Middle Ages, silt deposited from recurring floods had raised
the ground level of the old amphitheater by at least fifteen feet. Houses
were built over the old stadium seats, many of which can still be seen in
basements. The square began to be called the Piazza Agona and was
further corrupted into Piazza Navona.
Around 1470, Antonio Pamphili came to Rome from the town of
Gubbio, 130 miles to the north, and worked for Pope Sixtus IV as fiscal
procurator of the Apostolic Camera—in other words, he was a Vatican
tax collector. He bought a small town house first recorded in 1367 on
the Via dell’Anima, the street that runs behind the Piazza Navona.
Whenever a neighboring house came on the market, Antonio, as well as
his son and grandson in later years, eagerly snatched it up, knocking out
interior walls to incorporate the small houses into one larger house. By
the time Olimpia moved in, the residence had its main entrance on the
more impressive Piazza Navona and was the last house on the corner,
with three sides overlooking streets.
Olimpia was probably not thrilled with her new home. The central
location was excellent, but the building was a far cry from sumptuous,
well laid out, or airy. A sketch from 1612 shows the house was narrow
and four stories tall. It’s faÇade had irregularly spaced windows of various
sizes on different levels, and the piano nobile had three small windows
fronting onto the Piazza Navona from two small rooms. Many of
the rooms were not rectangular but trapezoidal, the result of cobbling
together separate buildings in various stages of decrepitude.
The majority of rooms were on the side of the house, on the Via Pasquino,
with another suite of apartments in the rear, on the Via dell’Anima.
The rooms were grouped around a tiny courtyard and well, entered
from a little alley on the Piazza Navona. The Casa Pamphili, called
Casa—house—because it wasn’t big enough to be a palazzo—was a
huge step down from the Nini home in Viterbo, with its spacious entry
hall, sweeping staircase, and elegant layout. But with her money, Olimpia
could fix it up and decorate it, and keep her eye on neighboring
houses that might come on the market.
It was difficult, however, to create a noble showplace on the very piazza
where the Roman vegetable market took place every Wednesday.
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