Both our ceremony and reception will be held at the magnificent Villa Aurelia. The venue has air-conditioning inside where we will be spending the ceremony and cocktail hour. We will then move on to the dinner which will be held outside, please note there are small stone pebbles in the front drive and at the dinner. The after party will be held inside. You can read about the remarkable history of the Villa below.

A small Baroque masterpiece, Villa Aurelia occupies the highest point within the walls of Rome on what is now the property of the American Academy in Rome, one of the leading American overseas centers for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities. The Villa is used for formal presentations of music, art and scholarship as well as for receptions and dinners.

The Villa Aurelia was originally built for Cardinal Girolamo Farnese around 1650. Following the death ofCardinal Farnese in 1668, the property was bought by Count Alessandro Savorelli, who undertook an extensive program of restoration and new construction. Much of the decorative work visible today dates from this time. In 1849 Giuseppe Garibaldi selected the Villa Aurelia as his headquarters for the defense of the Roman Republic against the French Army. As Christopher Hibbert writes in Garibaldi and His Enemies (Little, Brown & Co., 1966; p.83) “Every morning at dawn he would go up to the watch-tower on the roof of the villa where he ‘was immediately greeted by the French sharpshooters who gave him their particular attention all day long’, one of his staff recorded. But Garibaldi, after throwing a glance at the enemy used to light his cigar, which was never extinguished till evening.’ He seemed, in fact, almost to enjoy being under fire, even to be amused by his extraordinary escape from serious injury. ‘The mania on the part of the French for riddling my poor headquarters with bullets, shells and cannon balls sometimes led to amusing scenes,’ he wrote in the Memoirs which Alexandre Dumas so jauntily edited from his manuscripts.” Consequently, there was extensive damage to the villa. Count Savorelli was able to restore the Villa before his death, and it was then sold to the Monte di Pietà, from which it was bought in 1885 by Mrs. Clara Jessup Heyland, an American heiress from Philadelphia. In 1909 upon her death, Mrs. Heyland bequeathed the Villa and its grounds to the American Academy in Rome. The Villa served the Academy – and the city of Rome – well throughout the 20th century. During the First World War it was home to the American Red Cross in Italy. After the war it became home to the Academy Director and his wife as well as the female Rome Prize winners. The rooms on the piano nobile were reserved for official Academy entertaining, and the ground floor rooms for offices and subsequently studios. A music studio was created in 1925; important concerts were regularly given at Villa Aurelia to capacity crowds well into the 1930s. Closed during the Second World War, the Academy and Villa Aurelia reopened in 1945 offering educational programs for American officers and enlisted men. By 1947 the Academy was back in full operation with Villa Aurelia once again the residence of the director and site of official entertaining and presentation of concerts, art and scholarship.

The attire for this event is formal.