The palace remained the property of the Barberini family until the fourth decade of the eighteenth century, when they sold it to the Discalced Carmelites, who made it the seat of their General Curia; later passed to the Monte di Pietà, it is now owned by the municipality of Rome and home to educational institutions, including the Vittoria Colonna High School.

The starting point for the construction was the purchase, on June 15, 1581, of a house with four stores on the ground floor owned by the Scapucci family by Monsignor Francesco Barberini (1528-1600),[3] a protonotary apostolic and the prime mover in the incorporation of the household into Roman society.

[4] The monsignor, who in 1584 had his nephew Maffeo come to Rome to study at the Roman College, perfected the project in the following years by buying new houses bordering his own on Via dei Giubbonari, in the direction of what is now Piazza Cairoli, and entrusting Annibale Lippi with the arrangement of the first and second floors around a courtyard, with four rooms and a hall each.

While the idea of the grandiose palace at the Quattro Fontane was born and the construction site opened, with the 1625 purchase of the Sforza Cesarini villa,[9] the Casa Grande, assigned to the pope's brother Carlo, was endowed in the years 1623-1624 with new rooms and a unified elevation on Via dei Giubbonari by Giovanni Maria Bonazzini, architect of the Apostolic Camera and brother-in-law of Flaminio Ponzio.

[12] Contini's work was the entire body of the building on the Piazza del Monte di Pietà, with the now lost portal on the façade, the atrium adorned with twelve columns of oriental granite now in the Vatican Museums, the courtyard and the corner roof-terrace.

Work was interrupted after the death of Urban VIII by the flight of the Barberini family to France, as part of an investigation opened by his successor Innocent X for irregular management of Papal State property, and was resumed upon the return of the household to the city at the behest of Cardinal Francesco, finishing again under Contini's direction between 1653 and 1658.

The ancient institution of the Monte di Pietà of Rome, founded in 1527 and approved in 1539 by Paul III with the bull "Ad Sacram Beati Petri Sedem," had its headquarters from the very early seventeenth century in the palace formerly belonging to the Petrignani family of Amelia, which still houses it.

During the pontificate of Benedict XIV (1740-1758), the institute became the bank of the State of the Church, assuming first, in 1743, the functions of Secret Treasury and General Depositary of the Reverend Apostolic Camera (previously contracted out to private bankers) and then, from 1749, of Papal Mint.

In view of the new space requirements generated by these changes, the Monte di Pietà turned to the search for a location for its new offices, opting in 1759 to purchase from the Discalced Carmelites the old Casa Grande dei Barberini, bordering its palace.

"[23] The building's new function led to numerous alterations, including the elevation of the facade on Piazza del Monte di Pietà and, inside, the almost complete disruption of the original division into rooms to create classrooms, bathrooms, cafeterias and every other type of environment necessary for a school.

In the atrium, now the entrance to the Vittoria Colonna High School, two inscriptions "BANCO DE DEPOSITI" and "QUI SI PIGLIA ORO E ARG[ENTO]" still remain as evidence of its original use as a pawnshop.