Palazzo della Cancelleria: Opera Concerts in a Palace Closed to Visitors

The earliest Renaissance palace in Rome

The Palazzo della Cancelleria was built between 1489 and 1513 for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church and a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. Baccio Pontelli and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder led the work, and the palace is regarded as the first in Rome built from the ground up in the new Renaissance style. A rumour at the time held that the funds came from a single night's winnings at gaming.

The bone-coloured travertine of the facade was spolia taken from the nearby ruins of the Theatre of Pompey. The facade's rhythm of doubled pilasters between arch-headed windows is Florentine in conception, comparable to Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai, while the pattern of drafted masonry is ancient Roman in origin.

Why you cannot just walk in

The palace houses the institutions of justice of the Roman Curia and is an extraterritorial property of the Holy See, designated a World Heritage Site. It is not a museum and there is no daytime public entry.

That is what makes the concert unusual. When you hold a ticket to the opera concert at the Cancelleria you walk through the courtyard the listing attributes to Bramante, into a hall most visitors never see, and you hear arias in the building where Rome's musical life once centred. If you want a comparable evening in a church instead, St Paul's Within the Walls hosts arias and staged concerts a short ride away.

Piazza della Cancelleria and the facade

You meet at Piazza della Cancelleria 1, on the long Renaissance facade between Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and Campo de' Fiori. Look at the drafted masonry before you go in: it was cut from travertine removed from the Theatre of Pompey, Rome built for a city of a million from a city that then held thirty thousand.

The facade engulfs the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Damaso, the cardinal's titular church. Its entrance is on the right side of the facade, and it is worth a glance if it is open before the concert. The basilica sits, like San Clemente, on an older Roman site: excavations under the courtyard from 1988 to 1991 revealed the foundations of the 5th-century basilica founded by Pope Damasus I, along with a cemetery in use from the 8th century until shortly before the palace was built.

The courtyard and the concert hall

You enter through the inner courtyard with its 44 Egyptian granite columns. They came from the porticoes of the Theatre of Pompey's upper covered seating, having first been moved to build the old basilica. The listing attributes the courtyard form to Bramante, derived most probably from the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino.

The concert itself is held in a frescoed hall of the palace. Opera Lirica di Roma sings arias and duets with a small ensemble for about an hour, sung in Italian with introductions in English. Collect your tickets at the palace box office beforehand, arrive in good time, and remember that once inside you are on Vatican territory in a working palace, not a theatre lobby.

When the concert plays and how to time it

The palace is closed to ordinary visits all year, so there are no daytime hours. The concert plays on selected evenings and you should check the dates on the listing, then book ahead since seats are individual tickets collected at the box office.

Plan to arrive about 30 minutes early to collect tickets and settle. The concert lasts about an hour, so the evening is free again by mid-evening for dinner near Campo de' Fiori. If you want a longer musical night on other dates, the opera house itself runs a full staged season.

What to wear and when it is quiet

The listings say smart casual for the palace concerts, the same code as the church concerts in our dress code guide. There is no evening-dress rule here, unlike the opera house's opening nights.

Crowds follow the city: weeknights are quieter than weekends and the summer peak is busiest, our estimate. Either listing sells the same concert, so the quieter choice is usually the date, not the platform.

Finding the entrance at Piazza della Cancelleria 1

The meeting point for both concerts is Palazzo della Cancelleria, Piazza della Cancelleria 1, Rome. The palace is about two minutes on foot from Campo de' Fiori and about 10 minutes from Piazza Navona, our estimates. It makes an easy walk from Sant'Andrea della Valle on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.

No metro stop is close. The practical plan is a bus or taxi to Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and a short walk, or an evening stroll from Piazza Navona through the lanes of Parione. Streets nearby carry the old trades in their names: Via dei Cappellari for hat-makers, Via dei Balestrari for crossbow-makers.

Three ways to spend the night

Give the whole evening 90 minutes in all, our estimate, including ticket collection. The palace sits in the middle of Rome's most walkable evening quarter, so the concert fits easily before or after dinner.

Our pick is the routing through Campo de' Fiori: an early look at the square, dinner nearby, then the concert. If you are coming from the other side of the centre, Piazza Navona is a 10-minute walk, our estimate.

The short list

Read these before the lights go down and the arias start.

• The travertine of the facade came as spolia from the nearby Theatre of Pompey, and its 44 Egyptian granite courtyard columns were carried from the theatre's upper porticoes Wikipedia: Palazzo della Cancelleria.
• Vasari finished the frescoes of the Salone d'Onore in just 100 days in 1547, which named the room the Sala dei Cento Giorni, and Michelangelo's verdict was 'Si vede', it shows Wikipedia: Palazzo della Cancelleria.
• Between 1694 and 1705 several oratories by Alessandro Scarlatti and Christmas cantatas premiered here under Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, and a theatre by Filippo Juvarra stood in the palace Wikipedia: Palazzo della Cancelleria.
• The excavations of 1988 to 1991 under the courtyard found the foundations of the 5th-century Basilica di San Lorenzo in Damaso and a cemetery used from the 8th century until just before the palace rose Wikipedia: Palazzo della Cancelleria.
• From 1753 the vice chancellor of the palace was Henry Benedict Stuart, the Jacobite pretender to the British and Irish thrones, styled Henry IX and I Wikipedia: Palazzo della Cancelleria.