Memorial Association    Patron HRH The Prince of Wales

 Registered Charity No: 212692

Keats-Shelley

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Curator:

Catherine Payling MBE

Number 26 Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the Spanish Steps, used to be known as the 'Casina Rossa', or the 'Little Red House'. Most famously, it is the house in which John Keats died in 1821. The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association acquired it in 1906, in order to prevent it from being turned into a hotel, and to preserve it as a memorial to other English Romantic poets who spent time in Italy, notably Shelley, but also Byron and Leigh Hunt.

The exterior of this eighteenth century palazetto is as it was when Keats arrived in Rome. Inside, it has become filled with treasures and relics of the younger Romantic poets, and of other writers associated with Rome – Goethe, the Brownings, Henry James, Edith Wharton and James Joyce. The large Salone holds the finest library of English Romantic literature on the Continent.

To find out more about this unique corner of English letters in the heart of Rome you can visit our Rome website.

There, with another click, you can make a three-dimensional “virtual” tour of the House.

Drawing by Joseph Severn of

Keats on his deathbed

Fragment of manuscript

'Lamia' by Keats

The Keats-Shelley

Memorial House

The House at the foot of the Spanish Steps

Bust of Shelley

by Moses Ezekiel in the Salone

Centenary Appeal

Message from Curator

Letter

by Shelley

A message from

Catherine Payling, Curator of the Keats-Shelley House on the Centenary Appeal:

The campaign to save Keats’s house began in 1903, when the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association was formed. The house was bought in 1906, and opened as a museum in April 1909. The collections were amassed, mostly through gift, between then and 1909. Given spontaneously in the spirit of good-will and enthusiasm that the project engendered, these would be impossible to bring together today. They include paintings, sculpture, relics, and manuscripts and a substantial reference library, one of the finest of Romantic literature in Europe.

Visitor numbers have grown steadily, from a few hundred a year to 25,000. Our visitors are of all ages (at least one third under the age of 30), they are of all nationalities (many now from Eastern Europe) and all walks of life. They love this museum, which is also a memorial to the other young Romantic poets who spent time in Italy, Shelley, Byron and Leigh Hunt. As our visitors’ books records, for many it is the fulfilment of a lifetime’s dream; for others it is a serendipitous discovery. We also host hundreds of school groups each year, most of them Italian.

Historic houses need a lot of upkeep. Over the last few years we have managed to carry through a programme of essential maintenance to the House, including structural work, a new roof and repainting of the façade, drawing heavily on working funds held in Rome and capital from London.

As a British museum overseas, we are not eligible for UK public funding, although we enjoy a small degree of Italian Commune support. We are almost entirely dependant on our own entrance fees and on the generosity of individuals.

The centenary, which we have marked this April, 2009, was the right time to celebrate the past. And, most importantly, to plan for the future. Our plan is to safeguard the future of the House, and its unique collection, for a further hundred years, and to adapt it sensitively to the needs of the twenty-first century. We aim to double the museum’s floor-space by expanding from the piano nobile on to another floor, to create an exhibition area, shop, ticket office, bathroom and tea-room. We are also going to convert our large and unused 18c. basement into archive storage.

The estimated cost of both building projects is £237,000.  We have already raised £93,000, more than a third of this, and work is reaching completion in the cellar.

The history of our House in Rome is extraordinary; the life of this place of pilgrimage and learning has always been in the hands of people like you and me.  They came together at its inception, and at times of difficulty, during its first one hundred years; they guaranteed its survival and made it what it is today.  We now hope, with your help, to build on the successes of our first one hundred years and to secure the place of John Keats’s last months for the next.

If you would like to donate to the Appeal, click here to print out a donations form.

For UK donors, this contains information on how to increase your donation by Gift Aid.

For US donors, a tax-deductible way of giving for a specific aspect of the Appeal has been arranged by our sister organisation, the Keats-Shelley Association of America. If you wish to donate towards the new exhibitions area, (see Curator’s message) write a cheque made out to the KSAA and send it to: KSAA, Room 226, The New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018-2788, stipulating that it is for the “Exhibition Expansion, Keats-Shelley House Rome.”

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