A journey through the exhibition "Spain in Rome," from the Dalí Room of the Accademia di Spagna

The bond linking Spain and Rome has roots that run deep across an immense span of time—nearly a millennium—and today it takes shape in a remarkable exhibition that illuminates the historical, artistic, and religious fabric of the Eternal City through the Iberian legacy layered within it. “La Spagna a Roma, un racconto lungo mille anni” (“Spain in Rome: a story a thousand years long”) offers a compelling narrative of a continuous and fruitful presence, revealed to visitors in the symbolic venues of the Sala Dalí at the Istituto Cervantes and the Real Academia de España en Roma, through October 15.

Strolling through Rome—between the Forum of Trajan and Bramante’s Tempietto, past Castel Sant’Angelo and Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila—a through line unfolds that binds Italy’s capital to the Iberian world. In the heart of the city, certain monuments have been “speaking Spanish” for centuries: the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, a must-visit from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century for the Iberian community, is an emblematic example. In those years, Piazza Navona pulsed to the sound of Castilian amid its famed fountains and baroque splendor, while the Campus Martius became a cultural and social crossroads for ambassadors, artists, and pilgrims from the Iberian Peninsula.

The roots of this presence are profound: among the great emperors who shaped Rome’s history are several from the Iberian Peninsula, and in the centuries that followed the kings of Spain commissioned churches, convents, and true masterpieces of art, expressing a patronage unmatched in European history. The exhibition evokes this relationship through period photographs, prints, and original documents, as well as stories of individuals and maps that invite visitors to explore both familiar and lesser-known places in a “Spanish Rome.”

A central pillar of the show is the work of Elías Tormo y Monzó, tireless humanist and art historian who, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gathered and cataloged in his book Monumenti di spagnoli a Roma, e di portoghesi e ispano-americani (“Monuments of Spaniards in Rome, and of Portuguese and Hispano-Americans”) the monumental traces left by generations of Iberian travelers, students, religious, and artists. Tormo, Spain’s first professor of art history, championed direct engagement with artworks in his scholarship and taught during the Civil War at the Spanish School in Rome, bearing witness to the international dimension of Iberian culture in the Italian capital.

Among the masterpieces that frame the exhibition, Bramante’s Tempietto shines as a symbol of royal Iberian patronage: Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon entrusted Bramante with the project to fulfill a vow, giving life to one of the treasures of the Renaissance. The building later housed a Spanish congregation and still today forms the architectural heart of the Academy of Spain’s premises, a cultural and artistic hub for Rome’s Iberian community.

No account would be complete without the story of the Church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, between Corso Rinascimento and Piazza Navona, built in the fifteenth century with Spanish funds and dedicated to the memory of the martyrs of the Stadium of Domitian. Originally dedicated to Santiago (St. James), protector of the Reconquista, it was commissioned by Don Alfonso de Paradinas, a canon of Seville Cathedral, who had it erected at his own expense. For centuries, bequests from the “Spanish nation” ensured the building’s upkeep, until the nineteenth century, when it was abandoned in favor of Santa Maria in Monserrato, now Spain’s national church in Rome.

The journey through Spanish Rome also passes by the Iberian emperors, the statues of Trajan along his Forum, and Castel Sant’Angelo—once the Mausoleum of Hadrian—a place marked by memories that look to Roman Spain and to the two emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, native to the peninsula. No less evocative is the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila, Bernini’s masterpiece kept in Santa Maria della Vittoria, an artwork that transports visitors directly into the baroque mystical imagination of Catholic Spain; as well as that of King Philip IV, magnificently forged by Bernini and Lucenti for the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, an allegory of the Church’s protection by the Iberian monarchy in the seventeenth century.

The long voyage through Spanish Rome also touches the Spanish College at Palazzo Altemps, Velázquez’s portrait of Innocent X at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, and the fifteenth-century house of the Valencian noble Don Pedro Vaca—an architectural witness to the fruitful coexistence of elites on both shores of the Mediterranean. The narrative then embraces traces in the city’s toponymy, such as Via Chacón, and the pathways of commerce, with Monte Testaccio formed by the accumulation of sherds from Andalusian oil amphorae, a raw material essential to daily life in ancient Rome.

The exhibition does not merely celebrate a glorious past, but offers a truly dynamic map of a history made of relationships, exchanges, migrations, and cross-pollinations. Side events, guided walks, and lecture series from the Renaissance to the Baroque enrich the initiative and enable the rediscovery of a cosmopolitan dimension of Rome often overlooked in today’s public discourse.

Spain in Rome is the product of broad collaboration among research bodies and cultural institutions such as the Spanish School of History and Archaeology, the Istituto Cervantes, and the Real Academia de España, with the support of the Embassy and European projects dedicated to cultural heritage—evidence that cultural diplomacy remains a tool of dialogue and understanding among peoples even today. In the Urbs, Spanish memory emerges as a living presence made of stones and artworks, but also of languages, festivals, and influences visible in the weave of churches, monuments, and neighborhood life.

The story, then, is that of a layered city, in which every street, statue, and place of worship recounts the history of a cosmopolitan capital and of a Spain that, over time, has sown deep traces at the heart of European and Mediterranean culture. To discover “Spanish Rome” is to rediscover a shared heritage, to hear the ancient voice of travelers and artists, emperors and saints—still resonant in the marbles, bronzes, and streets of the Eternal City.