Cardinal Wolsey’s Palazzo in Rome

The Special Correspondent has forwarded to me a very interesting post from 2016 by The Roman Anglican about the Palazzo Rondanini in Rome. This was the residence created in the Eternal City after his creation as such in 1515 by the Cardinal Priest of Sta. Cecilia in Trastevere, Thomas Wolsey. Sadly for Wolsey he never got to visit the City let alone to stay in his Cardinalatial residence.

Wolsey is famous as the creator of Hampton Court and as a man with not a few residences at his disposal in his years of power - those of the See of York from 1514 until 1530 - most notably York Place which became Whitehall, and potentially those of the Sees he held in commendam at Durham from 1523-28 and Winchester in 1528-9, as well as The More in Hertfordshire. It was not until after his downfall that he visited some of those in the York diocese, notably Scrooby and Cawood, where he was arrested. However I was unaware that he actually had a residence in Rome were he ever to get there.

I was aware that his predecessor as Archbishop of York and as a Cardinal, Christopher Bainbridge, who lived and died in Rome, being buried in the Venerable English College, had a castello outside Rome which still bears his arms. It does make sense that Wolsey would have had a residence in case he did go to visit the Holy See, though circumstances were against him ever actually travelling there.

The modern traveller can see the surviving room from Wolsey’s time with the arms of King Henry VIII, Renaissance decor and walls with a landscape of trees as it is now a restaurant. 

The post about the palazzo and the decoration that survives from Wolsey’s tenure can be seen at An unexpected discovery: an Englishman's house in Renaissance Rome.