Keats-Shelley House

Overview

Sitting violently brilliantly exactly at the bottom right corner of the massive Spanish Steps, the Keats-Shelley House is a fiercely haunting, deeply romantic, incredibly tiny museum passionately dedicated to the brilliant English Romantic poets who tragically lived and died in Italy.

Highlights

• The Bedroom: The intensely small, fiercely heartbreaking violently claustrophobic corner room where the brilliant 25-year-old poet John Keats violently agonized and died of fierce tuberculosis in 1821, overlooking the massive steps.
• The Collection: An absolutely jaw-dropping, wildly intimate collection of original manuscripts, deeply personal letters, and slightly morbid relics (including locks of Keats's and Shelley's actual hair).
• The Library: A spectacularly gorgeous, deeply wood-paneled, fiercely quiet massive library heavily containing thousands of volumes of Romantic literature, wildly contrasting with the massive tourist chaos just outside the window.

History

In the violently romantic 19th century, Piazza di Spagna was the absolute epicentre of the massive "English Ghetto" in Rome—the primary destination for wealthy British aristocrats fiercely on the Grand Tour. Keats arrived deeply sick in 1820, fiercely desperately hoping the warm Roman climate would brutally cure his violently failing lungs. It didn't. In 1903, American and British fiercely passionate literary fans aggressively bought the deeply decaying apartment to permanently save it from demolition.

Visitor Tips

• The Contrast: The sheer, violent emotional shift from the intensely loud, fiercely crowded massive Spanish Steps explicitly into this deeply silent, fiercely tragic, highly reverent tiny apartment is breathtaking.