He suffered ill health due to a chronic disease of the spine and led a particularly reserved life. He married a Scotswoman, Gesine Dykes, and they had one daughter, Orietta, in 1922. Upon his father’s death in 1914, he inherited the great family wealth, consisting mainly of land and housing estates, and dedicated his entire life to managing them and supporting numerous charitable organisations and cultural institutions, especially in Rome. He became increasingly isolated with the advent of Fascism which he deeply and openly opposed in both word and deed. His most resounding act of opposition occurred on 18 November 1935, when he refused to hang the Italian flag from the windows of his palace, on the occasion of the donation of wedding rings in the nearby Piazza Venezia, provoking violent Fascist reactions; during the same period, he refused to let Hitler visit the palace. On 1 September 1939, after King Vittorio Emanuele III refused to receive him, he sent a letter to the King begging him not to involve the Italians in a tragic venture alongside Germany, and on 13 August 1940, on Mussolini’s direct order, he was exiled, though later released in November 1941 for health reasons. During the German occupation, he hid in the Roman neighbourhood of Trastevere, but continued secretly to help the poor. The Allies defined him a man of other times (“a true mediaeval saint, with an immaculate reputation”, in the words of the British statesman Harold Macmillan) and, with the consent of the Prime Minister Ivanoe Bonomi and of the National Liberation Committee, he was appointed mayor of Rome on 13 June 1944. Filippo Andrea VI went down in the history of the city for having concluded his first speech to the population with the plea “volémose bene!” (“let’s love each other!”, in Roman dialect), which was an invitation to stay united when facing the grave and widespread problems of post-war reconstruction, and he always remained true to his ideal of the city’s apolitical unity. The mayoral elections of 1946 exacerbated the complex municipal administration and therefore, at the end of that year, Filippo Andrea resigned and retired again to his private life, devoting his energy to charity.