Valle Giulia is a central area of Rome, located between Villa Borghese and Parioli. It takes its name from the Renaissance Villa Giulia, named after Pope Julius III and designed by the architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola.
The current layout of the district largely stems from the development undertaken for the 1911 International Exhibition of Art. The area, known as Vigna Cartoni until then, had previously been rural, home to several country villas of prominent Roman families (Villa Giulia, Villa Borghese, Villa Strohl Fern, Villa Poniatowski, Villa Balestra and Villa e Casina Vagnuzzi). In preparation for the event, a team of architects led by Cesare Bazzani drastically modified the entire area, giving it a public function and creating a road system where there had previously been none.
The main legacy of the exhibition was the development of Valle Giulia into museum district; it includes the Palazzo delle Belle Arti, designed for the fair by Cesare Bazzani – which, since 1915, has housed the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna – , the National Etruscan Museum, and the British School at Rome (originally the English Pavilion, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens). In the following years, the area became home to numerous foreign research institutes, including the Academia Belgica, and the Romanian Academy in Rome. On the slopes of the hill overlooking the valley lies Italy’s first faculty of architecture, which was established by the Sapienza University of Rome in 1920 and still exists today.
