casting it for Giovanni Maria Battista Pallotta. Upon his election, one of the cardinals remarked: "What a singular thing! The Spaniards disinterestedly wished you to be pope; the French wished it, though they had at first excluded you; the young men chose a man already aged, and the Barberini a man who was not their own creature!" Upon his election, he was crowned on 18 April 1655 by the Cardinal Protodeacon Gian Giacomo Teodoro Trivulzio before taking possession of the Basilica of San Giovanni Laterano on the following 9 May. One of his first acts as pope was to order Olimpia Maidalchini (known popularly as "la papessa" due to her extraordinary influence with Pope Innocent X) to return to her native town of Orvieto. Maidalchini had been a rival of sorts since Chigi's office as Secretary of State commanded much power which Maidalchini hoped to utilize for her own ends while she worked with Cardinal Decio Azzolino to try to circumvent Chigi's authority with the hopes of having Chigi either effectively sidelined or replaced. Nepotism The conclave believed he was strongly opposed to the nepotism that had been a feature of previous popes. In the first year of his reign, Alexander VII lived simply and forbade his relations even to visit Rome, but in the consistory of 24 April 1656, Pope Alexander announced that his brother and nephews would be coming to assist him in Rome. His nephew, Cardinal Flavio Chigi assumed the position of cardinal-nephew. The administration was given largely into the hands of his relatives, and nepotism became entrenched as it had been in the Baroque Papacy. Cardinal Flavio began work on the Villa Chigi-Versaglia at Formello in 1664. When announcing to the cardinals in 1656 that he would summon his relatives to Rome, the pontiff asked that each cardinal provide their opinion on his suggestion. The cardinals agreed, but attached several conditions to ensure that nepotism did not run too rampant. The pope eventually received his relatives in an audience, however, the meeting was formal and his relatives were required to kneel for the entirety of the audience as the pope informed them of why they had been summoned and what was expected of them. Urban and architectural projects in Rome A number of pontiffs are renowned for their urban planning in the city of Rome—for example, Pope Julius II and Pope Sixtus V—but Alexander VII's numerous