Along the Via di Santa Maria del Pianto in Rome, following the course of the former Via Mercatoria, stands a proud urban residence with an imposing corner tower. Known as the Palazzo a Punta di Diamante, this residence was built by the Santacroce family shortly after 1498. In its formal typology, the home builds upon traditional Roman residential architecture, combining a corner tower with adjacent wings that surrounded a central courtyard. As originally conceived, shops, to be rented out, were integrated into the plan of the ground floor along the Via Mercatoria. The home's main entrance was located on the Via in Publicolis, along with those of the family's other residences and their titular church, Santa Maria in Publicolis (Figures 2.1 and 2.2).

The Santacroce were a wealthy Roman family, which over the course of the fifteenth century acquired the unofficial title of nobles. The family had risen within the social ranks of Rome from the 1430s onwards, due to the joint effort of Andrea Santacroce (1402-c. 1473) and his five brothers. By the second half of the fifteenth century, under the direction of Prospero (died c. 1511) and Giorgio Santacroce (1452-c. 1499), belonging to the second generation, the family was comfortably situated among the social and political elite of the city, and was still on the rise.