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Beatrice Cenci was a noble Roman woman and member of an important aristocratic family. In the end of 16th century her sad story aroused a huge clamour in the society of that time.

Beatrice had a very unlucky childhood: her mother died when she was just 7, so she was sent by her father, the Count Francesco Cenci, to a convent. After she was sent back to Rome, at the age of 15, she started seeing the real character of her father: Francesco was a violent man with all the family members, including his new wife Lucrezia, Beatrice herself and her younger brother Bernardo.

Francesco had previously been in trouble for different crimes and his economic situation was desperate: to not pay her daughter’s dowry he decided to forbid her marriage and segregated her and her stepmother in a castle located in Petrella, a small town not far from Rome. However the situation got worse for Beatrice when her father, bound by his debts, escaped from Rome and reached the rest of the family in the castle. From that moment the domestic violence became unbearable: Beatrice was beaten and sexually abused for years.

The chronicles of the time tell that Beatrice, exasperated by the tortures she had to suffer, organised her father’s homicide, together with her stepmother, and her brothers Bernardo and Giacomo. They tried, in vain, to kill Francesco first with poison and then hiring some bandits from the countryside to assault him. As the third is always the charm, they were successful: Francesco was first drugged with some opium and then beaten to death by family members with the help of 2 castle inhabitants. Hurry up and rent apartments in Rome to find out more about Beatrice Cenci and other stories of the Eternal City.