14 Facts About Ferdinando Fuga

Ferdinando Fuga was an Italian architect who was born in Florence, and is known for his work in Rome and Naples.

In 1730, after a brief stay in Naples, Ferdinando Fuga was commissioned by Pope Clement XII to design his family home Palazzo Corsini, Rome and then later to build the Coffee House of the Quirinal Palace as a reception room for Benedict XIV Lambertini.

Ferdinando Fuga was commissioned to design the richly decorated chapel of the Palazzo Cellamare, as well as its rusticated gate to the gardens with a scrolling pediment and a sculptured cartouche of arms, ; Fuga's patron was the infamous ambassador, Antonio del Giudice, Prince of Cellamare.

Ferdinando Fuga's masterwork is the palazzo-like screening facade he erected in front of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Ferdinando Fuga designed the two-storey facade with a piano nobile whose windows have low arched heads set in fielded panels, over a ground floor with low mezzanine.

Between 1730 and 1732, Ferdinando Fuga completed the extension of the Manica Lunga of the Palazzo del Quirinale with the construction of the adjoining building called the Palazzina del Segretario delle Cifre.

Ferdinando Fuga was himself a member of this confraternity which possessed its own coemeterium on the banks of the Tiber, since lost to the nineteenth-century construction of the Lungotevere.

The previous church of 1575 was demolished in 1733, and Ferdinando Fuga gave the new one an elliptical plan under an elliptical dome.

Ferdinando Fuga was called in to pull together the 15th and 16th-century amenagements for the Corsini brothers, works which took from 1736 to 1758 before all was finally completed.

Ferdinando Fuga worked on the garden front of the palazzo, beginning with work on the library wing for Neri Corsini.

In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV commissioned Ferdinando Fuga to rebuild Basilica di Sant'Apollinare.

In 1767, Ferdinando Fuga was entrusted with the reconstruction in the interior, the small subsidiary domes over the nave chapels, and the addition of a tall dome over the crossing.

In Naples, Ferdinando Fuga was called upon in 1768 to transform the grand reception room of the Royal Palace, which had been in general disuse since the court had removed to Caserta, into a court theatre.

Ferdinando Fuga designed the Villa Favorita at Ercolano, in a manner traditional in Italy, has one facade directly on the street, the other giving on to extensive gardens.