Queen, Duke To Stay In Rome Quirinal

Press, Volume C, Issue 29501, 1 May 1961, Page 2

Queen, Duke To Stay In Rome Quirinal

(By th* Rome correspondent of “The Times"} The staff of the Quirinal, the official seat of the Italian President set on one of the seven hills of Rome, have prepared the splendid Imperial Apartments on the second floor for the state visit of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh this week. The hoisting of the Royal Standard on the clock-tower alongside the Italian national flag will mark the arrival of the first British sovereign to come as guest to the palace since George V and Queen Mary stayed there just 38 years ago.

With the guards of honour, a military band, and the television cameras providing a familiar background, the Queen will walk with Italy’s President Gronchi, and the Duke with Donna Carla Gronchi, towards the threshhold of a building which knew Popes as hosts before the kings came in 1870 and later the presidents of modem republican Italy. BEGUN IN 1583 It was built, or rather the oldest part begun, in 1583 under Gregory XIII, and this whole section in the style of the late sixteenth century was completed under Paul V in 1610. The architects were in turn Ottavio Mascherino, Domenico Fontana, Flaminio Ponzio and Carlo Mademo. For almost three centuries successive Pontiffs used it mainly as a summer residence. Earlier than the Popes, in the days of pagan Rome, the ground on which the Queen will tread in crossing the courtyard was elose to the site of the temples of Quirinus and of Venus Erydna, and later of the homes of some famous Roman citizens, including the poet Martial. Once across the threshold the visitors will mount the •'Staircase of Honour”—lined with ceremonial guards—which leads to the tapestried and frescoed hall known as the “Hall of the Cuirassiers.” This, with the "Hall of Ceremonies," is one of the two largest rooms in the palace. As the Queen and the Duke enter they will see 40 or 50 cuirassiers with swords and breastplates drawn up beneath the heavy gilt ceiling to do the honours. The visitors will probably go then straight to a small adjoining reception room for personal introductions before meeting the heads of diplomatic missions accredited to the Italian Government. IMPERIAL APARTMENTS

With the preliminary courtesies and exchanges over the Queen and Duke will be taken to a doorway at the opposite end of the Hall of the Cuirassiers from the entrance to the Pauline Chapel: this will bring them to the Imperial Apartments where they will rest.

The rooms in which state visitors lodge were given their title after the Emperor William II of Germany used them in 1893, some 23 years after the palace passed from the papacy to the kings of a united Italy. There are two seta of Imperial Apartments, one being intended for the consort The first is designed for a king

or masculine head of State, and although sumptuous is more austere in general tone than the second. This is particularly true of the bedrooms.

The ante-chamber of the first apartment contains a set of 12 exquisitely carved chairs, the work of Brustolon, depicting various phases of the seasons. The third room —each opens directly on to the next in these apartments —is done in Japanese style and the fourth, coming immediately before the bedroom, is dominated by pieces designed by Bufet, including a writing table inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl Beyond the bedroom the first Imperial Apartment ends with a study.

The second suite immediately suggests a softer touch with Chinese silken panels on the walls and a ceiling hung with satin in the first room. The bedroom is delicately ornate, the great canopied bed covered with heavy silk in blue and white to match the covers of the chairs, and flanked each side by small Venetian tables painted in a flowered design. The walls as well as the ceiling are painted and the windows overlook the Via del Quirinale directly on to the park immediately across the road. The softness is continued most markedly in one of the small reception rooms, known as the “Cyclamen Room,” from the matching shades of the walls, curtains and satinhung ceiling. This apartment also includes a study, a private dining room and a sitting room arranged for use if required as an additional bedroom. The final ante-chamber, decorated in pale grey, can also be approached from the narrow corridor running the

length of this section of the palace buildings, a corridor about 700 ft in lehgth known as the “Long Sleeve." On its walls is a vast collection of etchings from the hand of Piranesi who describes himself on one of them as “Member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of London." This part of the palace, overlooking the Via del Quirinale, was begun under Alexander VII to Bernini’s designs and completed in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Queen was last in Rome 10 years ago. She was accompanied then by the Duke, though on that occasion, which was before her accession, she stayed at the British Embassy. NOTABLE EVENTS

The Palace has seen its share of notable event*—Pius VII was arrested there by Napoleon’s troops in 1808— though even in the longer section of its history as a residence of the Popes it never played a part in the life of the Papacy comparable to the Vatican or Lateran palaces. When the temporal power of the Papacy was brought to an end and Rome became the national capital, Victor Emmanuel IL the first king of a united Italy, entered the Quirinal on December 31. 1870, but slept there only one night He later made it a residence for reasons of state more than anything else, and died there in 1878 without ever much caring for it. Similarly Victor Emmanuel 111 and his queen preferred the Villa Ada as their home. And now President Gronchi and Donna Carla keep their own flat going outside the palace. It remains, however, the centre of state occasions, a function which it fulfils admirably.