Notes

In 1927 the Count Giuseppe Primoli (1851-1927), son of Count Pietro Primoli and Princess Carlotta Bonaparte, donated to the city of Rome his important collection of works of art, Napoleonic memorabilia, family memories, enclosed in the ground floor rooms of the his palace. The collection, which was merged in part that of his brother Louis (1858-1925), was born not so much by a desire to offer a witness of imperial splendor but rather by the desire to document the close relationship between the Bonapartes and Rome. These ties were established with the force of arms in 1808, after the French occupation of Rome. The city became in 1811 "free and imperial city", destined to be ruled by the son of Napoleon who was conferred, even before birth, the title of King of Rome.
Later, after the fall of almost all the members of the Bonaparte family asked asylum of Pope Pius VII and settled in Rome: the mother Letizia Ramolino Palazzo Rinuccini, the brothers Louis and Jerome respectively at Palazzo Mancini Salviati and Palazzo Nuñez , her sister Pauline in his villa on Nomentana.
But the true founder of the "Roman branch" of the Bonapartes, from whom Count Primoli was the "rebel" brother of the emperor, Luciano that in 1804, in open conflict with Napoleon, moved to Rome. Count Primoli's mother, Carlotta Bonaparte, was in fact born from the marriage of a son of Luciano, Carlo Luciano, to his cousin Zenaide, daughter of Joseph Bonaparte. Carlotta married Count Pietro Primoli in 1848 and, immediately after the proclamation of the Second Empire, he moved with his family to the court of Napoleon III. In Paris, then, came the formation of Count Giuseppe Primoli that is completed, even after the fall of the Empire, in the literary salons of his aunts Matilde Bonaparte and Giulia Bonaparte, the Marchesa of Roccagiovine.
Cultured, passionate bibliophile, a talented photographer, Giuseppe Primoli lived between Rome and Paris and was closely involved with the literary and artistic circles in both cities. Represented, therefore, an interesting intellectual figure and collector who, through important family gifts and knowledgable acquisitions on the antiques market, was able to offer the city of Rome this elegant example of a museum-house.