Villa Mills

Villa Mills, formerly known as Villa Mattei al Palatino, was a villa in Rome located above the Palatine Hill between Via di San Bonaventura and Via dei Cerchi, in the Campitelli. The structure was built over the Domus Augustana and the Domus Flavia. It was demolished at the beginning of the twentieth century to allow excavations of the archaeological site.

History

In the sixteenth century, the area where Villa Mills was located was essentially made up of gardens and vineyards, part of the famous Orti Farnesiani on the Palatine Hill created by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.

A small country house was built by the Stati family above the ancient Domus Augustana, with a small loggia decorated with frescoes by Baldassarre Peruzzi – depicting the zodiac, muses, and other classical themes – and by other painters from Raphael's workshop. Later the villa passed through the hands of the main families of Rome, such as the Colonna, the Mattei di Giove, the Spada and the Magnani, and other lesser-known owners, and was known as Villa Mattei al Palatino or Villa Stati–Mattei. In 1818, the property was bought by Charles Andrew Mills (1770-1846) and the English archaeologist William Gell (1777-1836).

In 1824, the two restored the small open Renaissance loggia that housed Peruzzi's frescoes. Later on, medallions with a rose, a thistle, and a clover were placed on the pendentives of the painted arches of the first floor, while the pillars of the entrance gate were decorated with thistles.

In 1846, Robert Smith (1787-1873), a former officer of the East India Company, bought Villa Mills after marrying a French heiress, Julia Adelaide Vitton de Claude, and after the birth of the couple's son, Robert Claude, in Venice in 1843.