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.]] Palazzo Farnese is a noble and historical palace in Rome , which currently houses the French Embassy in Italy . "The most imposing private palace was designed by Antonio Da Sangallo The Younger ( 1484 - 1546 ). Construction of the palace began in 1517 , commissioned by Alessandro Farnese , who had been made Cardinal in 1493 when he turned 25 (thanks to his sister, who was Pope Alexander VI Borgia's official Mistress ) and was living a princely Lifestyle . When he was made pope, as Paul III , he employed Michelangelo to add a third story and revise the courtyard, as an emblematic "power house" suitable to the Farnese family. Dominating a small City Square , which makes it more prominent, the memorable features of its facade are the alternating pediments that cap the windows of the Piano Nobile , the central rusticated portal and Michelangelo's projecting Cornice . The central window Michelangelo revised when the cardinal became pope, adding an architrave to support the largest coat-of-arms with papal tiara Rome had ever seen. When Paul stepped to the balcony, the entire facade became a setting for his person. The Palazzo was redesigned in 1534 and 1541 , modified under Michelangelo from 1546 onwards and completed by Giacomo Della Porta in 1589 . Several main rooms were Fresco ed with elaborate Allegorical programs including a series of frescoes on Hercules , and The Loves Of The Gods by Annibale Caracci ( 1560 - 1609 ) and other Artist s, 1597 - 1608 . For generations the room with Herculean frescoes, housed the famous sculpture from Greco-Roman antiquity known as the Farnese Hercules . On the garden side, which faces the Tiber , Michelangelo proposed to give the palazzo's vast bulk some breathing room with a bridge to link the center of the garden facade with the Pope's villa, the Villa Farnesina on the Trastevere side. In Puccini 's Opera '' Tosca ,'' ( 1900 ), set in Napoleonic Rome, the Heroine 's confrontation with the malevolent Chief Of Police , ''Scarpia'', takes place in Palazzo Farnese. The Palazzo was inherited from the Farnese by the Bourbon kings of Naples , from whom the French Government purchased it in 1874 . Though the government of Mussolini ransomed it in 1936 , the French Embassy remains, under a 99-year Lease . The Palazzo Farnese houses the great scholarly Library amassed by the Ecole Française De Rome , concentrating especially on the Archeology of Italy and Medieval Papal history. EXTERNAL LINKS |