The Keats-Shelley House is located to the right of the Spanish Steps in Rome. Apart from the permanent collection of there are also special exhibitions. The English poet lived in this house from November 1820 until his death in February 1821.
Keats-Shelley Memorial House Rome
Useful information
Address: Piazza di Spagna, 26. Phone: (+39) 06 6784235. Opening times: Monday to Friday from 10.00 till 13.00 and from 14.00 till 18.00. Entrance fee: 6 Euros (students with ID, 65+, 18-: 5 Euros; children younger than 6: Free).
History and description
When the English romantic poet John Keats was found out to suffer from tuberculosis he was sent to Rome since the climate was thought to be better for him than the English one.
He found a house at the foot of the Spanish Steps, where he lived from November 1820 until he died at 26 years of age, on February 23rd 1821. Like his fellow-countryman and fellow-poet Percy Bysshe Shelley he was buried in the non-Catholic cemetery in the Testaccio district.
In 1903 there were plans to turn the house, which was known as Casa Rossa, into a hotel. The English King Edward VII and the American President Roosevelt protested and after American and English fans of the poets organized a collection, they managed to buy the house and change it into a museum. King Vittorio Emanuele III himself was present on the opening day, to dedicate the museum to the two poets.
The house consists of four rooms and the furniture present is the original furniture of the time Keats lived there. There are also a number of relics of Shelley, who had drowned off the coast of Viareggio, after having spent a good deal of his life in Rome. Like Keats, Shelley died at a young age (30).
The paintings on the walls of the Memorial House were done by Joseph Severn, the painter who shared the house with Keats.
The library of the Memorial House has more than ten thousand books and manuscripts pertaining to the Romantic period. There is also some of Keats‘ hair and an autograph of Oscar Wilde.
