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Napoleon and his adopted son and Italian viceroy, Eugène Beauharnais, tried to launch grand urban schemes for Italian cities. In Rome, among the most important projects were the reconstruction of the Piazza del Popolo in the north of the city and the layout of a garden on the adjacent Pincio. The first plans had been submitted to Pope Pius VI by French-trained Giuseppe Valadier in 1794. They envisaged a trapezoid square enclosed in colonnades. The designs were later enlarged and reworked by others. All that came of it in the end was a greatly scaled-down version by Valadier in 1816 with three-arch portico and terrace, plus the Casina erected in 1813-17 at the summit of the park.
The Casina was redesigned in the Neoclassical style in the long tradition of Roman garden buildings. The various parts of the scheme - terraces, balconies, and roof superstructures, and a central Belvedere tower are assembled like pieces from a building kit. The baseless Tuscan order columns at the socle level recall the abrupt formal language of Revolutionary architecture, while the vase-topped granite Ionic columns on the main floor add a cheerful note, matching the suburban environment.
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