Official Events

Opening Ceremony and Welcome Reception at the Fiera Roma

EULAR Congress Dinner at Villa Medici

Friday, 18 June 2010 20:30-24:00
Price: EUR 95 per person

(limited number of seats, will be attributed on a first-come, first-served basis)

The Villa Medici is an architectural complex centered on the villa whose gardens are contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome. The Villa Medici was founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Villa Medici became at once the first among Medici properties in Rome, intended to give concrete expression to the ascendancy of the Medici among Italian princes and assert their permanent presence in Rome. For a century and a half the Villa Medici was one of the most elegant and worldly settings in Rome, the seat of the Grand Duke's embassy to the Holy See. When the Medici became extinct in the male line in 1737, the villa passed to the house of Lorraine and, briefly in Napoleonic times, to the Kingdom of Etruria.

In this manner Napoleon Bonaparte came into possession of the Villa Medici, which he transferred to the French Academy in Rome in 1803 with the intention of preserving an institution once threatened by the French Revolution. In this way, he hoped to retain for young French artists the opportunity to see and copy the masterpieces of antiquity and the Renaissance. Since then it has housed the winners of the prestigious Prix de Rome, under distinguished directors like Ingres and Balthus.

At first, the villa and its gardens were in a sad state, and they had to be renovated in order to house the winners of the Prix de Rome. The competition was interrupted during the first World War, and Mussolini confiscated the villa in 1941, forcing the Academy of France in Rome to withdraw until 1945. The competition and the Prix de Rome were eliminated in 1968 by André Malraux. The "Académie des Beaux-Arts" in Paris and the "Institut de France" then lost their guardianship of the villa Medici to the Ministry of Culture and the French State.

From that time on, the boarders no longer belonged solely to the traditional disciplines (painting, sculpture, architecture, metalengraving, precious-stone engraving, musical composition, etc.) but also to new or previously neglected artistic fields (art history, archaeology, literature, stagecraft, photography, movies, video, art restoration, writing and even cookery). Artists are no longer recruited by a competition but by application, and their stays generally vary from six to eighteen months.

The villa, its out-buildings, and its grounds were the object of a new rehabilitation and modernization campaign, in which the restoration of the facade over the gardens constitutes the most spectacular step. Work continued under the direction of the previous director, Richard Peduzzi, and the Villa Medici resumed organizing exhibitions and shows created by its boarders.

Don't miss the opportunity to spend an unforgettable evening in the park of the Villa and enjoy a dinner with the sunset over the roofs of Rome.

RELATED INFORMATION

Congress Dinner registration

Reservations for the Congress Dinner can be made together with the online congress registration.

Register now >>

More on registration >>

Villa Medici official web site >>

Wikipedia on Villa Medici >>

Walk the Villa Medici surroundings with google maps >>