He bequeathed the paternal Alessandro (v.), and the vast wealth that came to him through inheritance he generously devoted to charitable purposes. Among other things, he founded an orphanage in Castelgandolfo and established a refuge for girls and women in distress on the climb to S. Onofrio on the Gianicolo. His generosity is also evidenced by substantial donations to churches and his munificent patronage of sacred art. Remaining unmarried, he was received into the Order of Malta, where—by papal dispensation—he attained the high rank of professed knight-commander. He held various municipal offices and administrative posts in charitable institutions. In the final months of his life he accepted from Pius IX the appointment as lieutenant-colonel of the Civic Guard and carried out its duties with ability and dedication, commanding the Second Battalion.
His younger brother ALESSANDRO, b. in Rome on 7 June 1809, d. there on 7 Feb. 1886, succeeded his father (1829) in directing the bank that had brought wealth and renown to the family. By the renunciation of his elder brothers he also assumed the paternal title of Prince of Civitella Cesi and was regarded as the head of the house. A man of rare energy and wide-ranging enterprise, he not only made his bank prosper but also all the other agricultural, industrial and commercial ventures he undertook, among them the tobacco monopoly in the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States, so that he amassed wealth that was almost prodigious for the time. Considered one of the wealthiest persons in Europe, he was extremely generous in his benefactions, a patron of rare munificence (among other things, he financed at his own expense the complete restoration of the church of the Gesù and many other Roman churches) and assembled in the sumptuous palace—now destroyed—on Piazza Venezia