Excerpt from unpublished letter of Marie Antoinette congratulating Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi on his elevation to Cardinal, written at Versailles 12 October 1775. Collection of HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.
Since 2013, students at Rutgers-New Brunswick have enjoyed an extraordinary opportunity to “do history” by working with digitized pages of primary documents (dating from 1400-1940) belonging to the Papal family of the Boncompagni Ludovisi.
So it is with great sadness that Rutgers Classics reports the death of the head of family, HSH Prince Nicolò Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi, aged 77, on 8 March 2018, at his ancestral home of the Casino Aurora in Rome. Trained as a chemical engineer at ETH Zurich and fluent in seven languages, Prince Nicolò possessed a dazzling knowledge of European history and enthusiastically encouraged Rutgers’ efforts to delve into a topic in which he had unparalleled expertise and passion—the architecture, art and archives of the Boncompagni Ludovisi.
Photographed at the Casino Aurora in 2010: HSH Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome 1941-Rome 2018.
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