Palazzo Altemps in Rome began in the fifteenth century as a design by Melozzo da Forlì for Girolamo Riario, whose 1477 wedding is commemorated in a fresco. Sangallo the Elder and Baldassare Peruzzi later worked on it for Cardinal Francesco Soderini. Soderini sold it in 1568 to Cardinal Mark Sittich von Hohenems Altemps, and Martino Longhi built the belvedere for him.
The palace later became Holy See property and was used briefly as a seminary. The state received it in 1982, and it opened as a museum in 1997 after about fifteen years of restoration.
It is now part of the Museo Nazionale Romano and presents the history of collecting. It holds sculptures from the Boncompagni-Ludovisi and Mattei collections, an Egyptian collection, a private theater and the church of Sant'Aniceto.
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