Torlonia, Carlo

TORLONIA, CARLO. - Born in Rome on 18 Dec. 1798, died there on 31 Dec. 1847.

Second-born son of Giovanni Raimondo, the well-known financier who secured the fortunes of the house of T., don Carlo - like his elder brother don Marino jr. - left the management of his father's Bank to the younger son Alessandro (v.), and the enormous wealth that came to him by inheritance he devoted largely to charitable purposes. To him are owed, among other things, the founding of an orphanage in Castelgandolfo and the creation of a shelter for "endangered" girls at the Salita di S. Onofrio on the Janiculum. His generosity is also attested by the substantial donations made for the benefit of churches and by his munificent patronage of sacred art. Having remained unmarried, he was received into the Order of Malta, obtaining there - by pontifical dispensation - the high dignity of professed commander. He held various municipal offices and positions in the administration of charitable institutions. In the last months of his life he accepted from Pius IX the appointment as lieutenant colonel of the Civic Guard and discharged its duties with ability and commitment, commanding the II battalion.

Renzo U. Montini

His younger brother ALESSANDRO, b. in Rome on 7 June 1809, d. there on 7 Feb. 1886, succeeded his father (1829) in the direction of the Bank that had brought wealth and luster to the family. Through the renunciation of his elder brothers he also assumed his father's title of prince of Civitella-Cesi and came to be regarded as the head of the family. A man of rare activity and of the broadest initiatives, he not only made his Bank prosper, but also all the other agricultural, industrial and commercial enterprises in which he had a hand, among them the Tobacco Monopoly in the Kingdom of Naples and in the Papal State, so as to accumulate riches that were truly prodigious for the age. Considered one of the wealthiest persons in Europe, he was most generous with charitable donations, a patron of rare munificence (among other things, he provided at his own expense for the complete restoration of the church of the Gesù and of many other Roman temples) and gathered in the sumptuous palace - today destroyed - of Piazza Venezia one of the most conspicuous art collections of the early nineteenth century. Other distinguished collections, predominantly archaeological, he arranged in his residences in Borgo, at the Lungara and in the former Albani Villa on the Via Salaria. The Roman chronicles of the last century are full of reports about his life and about the festivities that he offered with the attendance of sovereigns, royal princes, cardinals and the most illustrious names of the European aristocracy.

He took as his wife the princess Teresa Colonna and had two daughters by her, of whom Anna Maria married don Giulio Borghese, who assumed the surname of T. in order to perpetuate the princely title of the Fucino. T. in fact obtained this title from Victor Emmanuel II after he had carried out, with titanic labor, the draining of the Abruzzese lake of the same name, deriving from it vast estates immediately put under intensive cultivation. The undertaking, which lasted from 1854 to 1875, cost T. over 34 million and made more than 16 thousand hectares cultivable. In order to attend to the colossal work, T. ceded all his enterprises to others (the Bank, in 1862, to the well-known historian Giuseppe Spada [v.]), determined to succeed where so many attempts had failed, beginning with that of the emperor Claudius, who nevertheless disposed of the resources of the Roman world.

T. took no active part in the politics of his time; in 1848 he refused the appointment as a member of the High Council offered by Pius IX; and if the following year, during the Mazzinian Republic, he consented to sit on the municipal Council of Rome, he did so solely in order to prevent with his own authority any squandering of public money, so true is it that he was not denied, once the restoration had taken place, the trust and esteem of the Pontiff.

Renzo U. Montini