Casina Pio IV

The Casina Pio IV (or Villa Pia) is a patrician villa in Vatican City which is now home to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was begun in the Spring of 1558 by Pope Paul IV in the Vatican Gardens. Paul IV commissioned the initial project of the 'Casina del Boschetto', as it was originally called, to architect Pirro Ligorio and the first mention of the building can be found on 30 April 1558 and in a notice of the following 6 May, saying that the Pope spent "two thirds of his time at the Belvedere, where he has begun to build a fountain in the woods".

Upon Paul IV's death on 18 August 1559, Pope Pius IV took on the project, which had not yet been completed, and improved it. The Casina's iconographic programme seems to have been inspired by Cardinal Charles Borromeo, nephew of Pius IV, who probably had it in mind as the headquarters for the Academy he was about to found, on 20 April 1562, called Academia Noctes Vaticanae.

Pope Pius XI, the founder of the current Pontifical Academy of Sciences, made the Casina the Academy's current headquarters in 1936.

References

*Maria Losito, "La Casina Pio IV in Vaticano", Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze, Vatican City, 2005 (in Italian. English translation forthcoming).
*Graham Smith, "The Casino of Pius IV", Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1977.