"The new elective Senate is an unprecedented institution in the century-long history of our young Republic, for it comes into being not at the behest of a high authority of state but in response to
the people's will to directly reflect the political feelings of the ation". 8 May 1948. Ivanoe Bonomi pronounced these words at the beginning of the new Parliament when he took office as President of the first republican Senate. The ceremony was all the more remarkable because it marked a historical coincidence with a similar
event that had taken place exactly one hundred years earlier; the joint sitting (of Chamber and Senate) that had inaugurated the Parliament of Piedmont in Turin, in a building of the same name: Palazzo Madama.
The psychological history of a country is no less influential than the history of events and persons. In Italy's psychological history, the name "Palazzo Madama" itself has a special meaning, for a Palazzo Madama has housed the Senate in Turin, capital of Piedmont, and
the Senate in Rome, capital city of unified Italy.
In the eyes of many, the histories of the two women who gave their names to the two buildings gradually merged into one, and many went as far as believing that the "Madams" of Turin and Rome were one and the same.
In fact, there were two Madamas, and each represented a different era and a very different historical context. Margaret of Austria - the Roman Madama - lived when the Renaissance was at its highest and the Medici family and their relations with the papacy and the empire at their strongest.
Christine of France - the Madama of Turin - represented a totally different historical period, about one hundred years later, when the Duchy of Savoy had very close ties with France.
The two women have nothing more in common than the nickname of
madama, and their being related to the Medici family.

The Madama of the Turin palazzo is Christine of France, Duchess of Savoy, who was commonly referred to as Madama Reale, Royal Madam. A daughter of King Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici, she married Victor Amadeus I of Savoy in 1619. As regent for their children after the death of her husband, she ruled the small state of Piedmont for almost thirty years with a firm and authoritarian hand. Her foreign policy led to closer ties between the Savoy family and France and to an alliance with her brother Louis XIII, King of France.
However, her policies earned her the hostility of her brothers-in-law, Prince Thomas of Savoy-Carignano and Cardinal Maurizio, who, supported by Spain, forced her to flee Turin in 1639. With the assistance of the French, she returned a year later, sustained by a political marriage between her daughter and Cardinal Maurizio, who, in the circumstances, renounced cardinalship.

The woman after whom the palace in Rome was named is Margaret of Austria, an illegitimate daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain).
In 1536, at only 14 years of age, she was married to Alessandro de' Medici, duke of Florence, but a year later she was already a widow. She then married Ottavio Farnese, heir of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. Margaret lived in the Roman palace for about thirty years, from 1538 to 1559 and then again between 1567 and 1580. The intervening years were spent in the Netherlands, where she revealed considerable skills in her role as governor, an office to which she had been appointed by her half brother, Philip II of Spain.

The first important conversion work on the palazzo was performed when the Medici family acquired it. Giovanni, second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and later Pope Leo X, after being appointed cardinal at only 17 years of age, decided to take up residence in Rome in 1492 and purchased the building in 1505. He had the building converted on the basis of a design by Giuliano di Sangallo and installed here what remained of his father's library after the family's expulsion from Florence. The palace became the Roman seat of the Medici family as well as a centre of humanistic culture. After becoming pope, Giovanni made his cousin, Giulio, cardinal of the Church and brought him to Rome. After Giovanni's death, Giulio inherited the building.
Giulio became pope in 1523, with the name of Clement VII (incidentally, this was the pope who rejected in 1533 Henry VIII's request for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, a decision which led to the breaking of the English Church from Rome a year later). Pope Clement bought out the legitimate inheritor of the building, Lorenzo's granddaughter Caterina, by providing her with the dowry which enabled her to marry the dauphin of France. At Giulio's death his nephew Alessandro inherited the building.
At the death of Alessandro and of his widow Margaret of Austria - the Madama after whom the palazzo was by then called -, Caterina, who had in the meanwhile become the queen mother of France, again inherited the palazzo, which in 1589 passed to Ferdinand I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by virtue of a clause in the marriage contract stipulated with Christine of Lorraine, granddaughter of Caterina.
A few years later the building became property of a third Medici pope, Leo XI, who was pontiff for a few days in 1605.

Between the late 16th and the mid-17th century Rome underwent an extraordinary period of urban change. The new development of the city, planned by Sixtus V and Gregory XV, was starkly accelerated under Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, pope from 1623 to 1644), the main force behind grandiose works that changed the face of entire quarters of the city.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand II ordered that Palazzo Madama be restored in order to keep pace with the changes that were transforming the city. A baroque façade designed by Paolo Marucelli and completed in 1642 took the place of the former asymmetrical façade, in which "the doorway is not in the middle" and "the floors do not match" as we can read in a document dated 1595. Under the direction of Monanno Monanni, the interior was enriched with gilded ceilings and friezes.
The Medici did not, however, make any further use of the building until 1725, when Violante of Bavaria, sisterin- law of Gian Gastone de' Medici, the last member of the family, made it her residence. This was to be Palazzo Madama's last period of social splendour, a venue for balls and receptions as well as the seat of the Quirini Academy. In 1738, when the Medici family had died out, the building shared the fate of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which passed to Francis Stephen of Lorraine (later Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, reigned 1745-65), husband of Maria Theresa of Habsburg.
However, the new owner lived in Vienna and the Roman building was of no interest for him. In 1755 the Emperor sold the building to Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758).

Benedict XIV, who bought Palazzo Madama in 1755, made it the seat of his government. The new function of the building required important renovation work. A second courtyard was opened, in the place which houses today the Senate chamber, and the square in front of the façade was redesigned by Luigi Hostini. In later years the building was to serve various other uses: courts of law, police headquarters and tax office. Some rooms were even turned into prison cells. In 1798-99 the building became the central office of the Roman Republic.
In 1850 Pius IX (Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, 1846-1878) transferred the Ministry of Finance and Public Debt and the pontifical postal administration to Palazzo Madama and carried out additional alterations.

When Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy (1870) and proclaimed capital of the new State (1871), Palazzo Madama was chosen to be the seat of the new Senate.
This made further conversion work necessary. In the space occupied by the courtyard of the Papal State's postal administration, architect Luigi Gabet constructed the sitting chamber of the Senate. The Senate of the Kingdom met here for the first time on 28 November 1871. In 1888 a new structure, designed by Gaetano Koch, was built inside Palazzo Madama to accommodate the library.