Fellowship Report: Heirlooms of Antiquity

In 2021 Tommaso Zerbi (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History) received the Rome Fellowship to undertake research towards the project: Gothic Revival atop the Heirlooms of Antiquity: Villa Mills and the Palatine Hill, c. 1818-1926. His report is below.

“Despite its prime location in Rome’s archaeological heart, knowledge about the villa that once stood atop the Palatine Hill and incorporated the imperial palace erected for Domitian after his accession to power remains limited and tends to rely on hearsay and hypothesis rather than primary information. The award of a Rome Fellowship enabled me to address this gap and delve deeply into the relationships in pre-unification Rome between architecture, politics, and culture, between Italy and Britain, and between modernity and antiquity.

My stay in Rome had a tremendous impact on the project, revealing that much of what we knew about the Gothic Revival edifice known as ‘Villa Mills’ was either vague, imprecise, or incorrect. While uncovering and diving into primary sources in approximately fifteen archives and institutes, groundbreaking evidence came to light, suggesting that the villa, erased from the Palatine Hill as part of the acts of demolition pursued during the fascist ventennio, should be renamed ‘Villa Smith’. Robert Smith (1787–1873), a lieutenant-colonel of the East India Company, not its previous owner Charles Andrew Mills (1770–1846), was responsible for the medievalist-orientalist makeover of the pre-existing villa above the Domus Augustana.

My research as a Rome Fellow culminated in a public lecture at the British School at Rome in 2021 and the publication of a journal article in issue 91 of the Papers of the British School at Rome (2023). This article reconstructs the British presence on the Palatine Hill, investigates the individual behind the medievalist-orientalist transformation of the Domus Augustana, and offers a critical reevaluation of Villa Mills and the character of Mills. Furthermore, it paves the way for additional research avenues exploring the site on the Palatine Hill as a diachronic ‘tale’ of three empires: the Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Italian (fascist) Empire.”