Vittoriano
The American diplomat, George Washington Wurts (1843-1928), and his wife, Henriette Tower (1856-1933), heiress of one of the emerging families of Philadelphia, settled in Rome, between Palazzo Antici Mattei and Villa Sciarra: here the two spouses, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, gathered a vast collection composed of paintings and works of decorative arts such as silver, furniture, tapestries, bronzes, and porcelains of Western and Oriental origin.
Following the death of her husband on January 25, 1928, Henriette decided to donate Villa Sciarra to the Municipality of Rome and leave the art collection, composed of over four thousand pieces, to the Italian State, specifically to the Museum of Palazzo Venezia, where it arrived after her death in 1933.
