Take a Tour Inside Our Headquarter

The Center for American Studies is located in Rome on the the main floor of Palazzo Mattei di Giove, also known as Antici Mattei.

The palace was built at the behest of Asdrubale Mattei, Marquis of Giove, who entrusted its construction to the well-known architect Carlo Maderno.

The works, begun in 1598, were completed in about twenty years.

The building was the last to be constructed of the five palaces that make up the Insula Mattei.

Made of brick and travertine, the style of its facades is late sixteenth-century, it has three floors, with a cornice adorned with heraldic motifs of the family and is completed by a covered roof-terrace with an open gallery.

The two courtyards and the staircase of the palace are decorated with sculptures, reliefs and ancient vases, mostly from archaeological excavations carried out in the possessions of the Mattei family.

All the antiques still preserved within it were one of the most precious collections of ancient marbles among the private ones existing in Rome.

The rooms of the palace have vaults painted by the most eminent artists working in Rome in the early seventeenth century, such as Francesco Albani (Biblical stories), Gaspare Celio, Cristoforo Greppi, Giovanni Lanfranco, Pietro da Cortona (Stories of Solomon).

The paintings that adorned the many rooms and the gallery are now preserved at the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Palazzo Barberini.

When the male line of the Mattei di Giove family died out at the beginning of the 19th century, the palace was inherited by Marianna, daughter of Giuseppe Mattei and wife of Carlo Teodoro Antici di Recanati, brother of Adelaide, mother of Giacomo Leopardi, who stayed there between November 1822 and April 1823.