GORGONEION, C. 200 CE. PALAZZO CENCI BOLOGNETTI In about 1575, the local magnate Cristoforo Cenci rebuilt his family palazzo atop the ruins of ancient buildings forming a small steep hill in the southern Campus Martius. Though the family had been living on this site since at least 1252, the date of a Cenci buying a tower here which still exists behind the stucco rustication, Cristoforo knew that a little display of spolia would push the family pedigree back into antiquity. He set up two funerary altars to ancient members of the gens Cincia on the façade of the family church across the piazza from this doorway. The portone, once the main door of the palazzo, was ornamented with a Medusa head, a Gorgoneion, staring out down the via Monte de' Cenci toward the recently-enclosed Jewish ghetto.

#SpoliaSunday shows a rather anguished-looking #Gorgoneion atop the portal of #palazzoCenci in #Rome, part of the propaganda effort of Cristoforo #Cenci to convince the #Romans that his family had always been powerful in the city.