Villa Wolkonsky

Owned by the Russian princess Zenaïda Wolkonsky in the mid-19th century and used as a wartime headquarters by the Nazi Gestapo, in 1971 this villa became the official residence of the British ambassador to Italy in Rome. A peaceful garden under the arches of a Neronian aqueduct surrounds the building and the greenhouse, where a collection of 350 Roman marbles was presented to the public for the first time last year. Here’s where Nikolai Gogol and Walter Scott wrote some of their best pages, and where you should go if the idea of a four-story museum makes you dizzy.