Palazzo Farnese

This guide to Palazzo Farnese in Rome opens in 1493 with a cardinal's appointment that scandalized the College of Cardinals, and the family connection to Pope Alexander the Sixth behind it. It follows Alessandro Farnese's decades-long climb to the papacy himself, and the palace he built to match it, first designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and then reshaped when he called in Michelangelo. Listen for the story behind the cornice above the facade, and the bridge across the Tiber that never got built.