CASTEL SANT’ANGELO

The Castel Sant’angelo appears prominently in the history of Rome and of the Catholic church. The building of the mausoleum started in 123 AD and was completed in 139 AD during the reign of Hadrian's successor, and next Roman emperor, Antoninus Pius. During the years the Castel Sant’Angelo was constructed, it was the tallest building in Rome. Originally the building was cylindrical and decorated with marble. On top was a roof garden with trees and a quadriga of Hadrian, made of gold.

Castel Sant’Angelo nowadays is a square construction, 89 meters wide based on a cylindrical colonnaded drum 64 meters in diameter. From Hadrian's until the Caracalla family, the Roman emperors and their families were buried in this mausoleum as late as 217 AD.

They say the statue of Archangel Michael on top of the building was placed as a sign of the end of the plague from 590 AD. From this moment on the building was known as Castel Sant’Angelo. In the years from then on the statue has been substituted six times.

During the war, there was the need for more military bases, which led to a conversion in 401 AD, the mausoleum was changed into a fortress to be used by the military. This continued until the 14th century. After it was used as a castle. This was done as a protection of the pope. In case of an emergency, a secret fortified tunnel was added. It led to the Vatican city. This way the pope could seek refuge when under siege. Castel Sant'Angelo has had various functions over the years. In order to ensure that all these functions were possible, changes, adjustments, and additions were necessary.

It began as Emperor Hadrian, had built the mausoleum as he wanted it to be. At that time, there were some statues on the mausoleum that served to keep out or drive away Goths. Apparently, the subsequent owners did not think them sufficient or convenient enough.

The Roman emperors needed it to be part of their defense structure and made a castle of the mausoleum. In order to obtain this goal, additional walls (including the Aurelian Wall) and towers were erected under the emperor Aurelianus. An accessory kind of fortress was built for extra defense. This was during the time of the attacks of the barbarians. Unfortunately, many renovations and tombs have been lost as a result of the conversion from a mausoleum to a castle. Up to and including the 16th century the defenses were improved. First, after the Goten had left, a conflict arose between the popes and the nobility, around the castle. Both parties had the Castel Sant'Angelo converted into a well-fortified fortress, with the intention to protect the Vatican from possible enemies including the Roman nobility and bourgeoisie.

For additional security of the Vatican, Pope Nicholas III had the Passetto di Borgio (Italian for "passage", aka Corridoio (Corridor)) built in 1277. This was in fact, as the name suggests, a wall connecting the Apostolic Palace and the Castle to the Aurelian wall. The Passetto was used by the popes when under siege. The popes could just run from the Vatican to the impregnable Castel Sant'Angelo. In this way, they were safe for invaders. Several popes used the passage, for this reason. Clement the VII crossed the passetto when his life was in danger during the sacking of Rome in 1527.

Later the Castel Sant'Angelo was decorated by Pope Paul III as a papal treasury. He also added more comfort, to make it suitable as a residence for a longer period of time. Although the Castel Sant'Angelo was decorated like a treasure trove. This luxurious layout was used a residence in times of need. For comfort, for example, beautiful furniture (eg frescoes), and other interior decorations were made. This made it more attractive for popes to use, especially if they needed to stay there for a longer period of time.

At a certain point in time thereafter, the downstairs rooms were used as prisons, resulting in the placement of torture machines on these floors.

Years later came a period of relatively few changes, or at least no structural ones. The castle was in that period occupied by soldiers who remained loyal to Napoleon. They were surrounded by an army from Naples. Naples was at that time the kingdom of Prince Murat, who happened to be Napoleon's brother-in-law.

In September 1870, the building was handed over by the Vatican to the Italian army. It was the beginning of yet another function. From 1901 on, Castel Sant'Angelo would serve as a museum. This museum comprised 58 halls showing history until then. In these recent years, people are mainly concerned with improving the appearance of the castle/museum, through restorations, adjustments and/or additions.

A good example of this is the addition of the angelic statues on the Pons Aelius at the end of the seventeenth century, the baroque period. The original bridge was then decorated by Bernini. It is since then known as the Ponte Sant’Angelo. This is not considered part of the original building. Incidentally, part of the original castle has now been restored and transformed into a park. Contemporary Castel Sant'Angelo consists of no less than 5 floors:

• Floor 1 starts with the spiral staircase and is very long.
• Floor 2 contains the cells and the storage rooms
• Floor 3 is mainly the military floor, but there are also two large fields.
• Floor 4 is the residential area and consists of many different rooms and other living areas. It is decorated with beautiful frescoes by among others, Giulio Romano and Perin del Vaga.
• Floor 5 is the top floor and has a large terrace with, among other things, the famous bronze archangel Michael.

The building is located in the actual city of Rome, just a couple of blocks from the Vatican city, situated in front of the river Tiber. One possible explanation for the choice of this location was Hadrian’s two-fold priorities with regards to his legacy. On one hand, the proximity to older Roman burials provides a link between Hadrian and Roman greats of the past. Especially to Augustus (whose Mausoleum would have been visible a few hundred meters to the east). At the same time, by choosing this location to build his Mausoleum on the opposite side of the river, Hadrian emphasizes his own uniqueness among all of these historical figures.

While it is not entirely clear why the location was chosen as it was, the implications of the choice are more clear. The Pons Aelius provided a new, easy link between the Campus Martius and Ager Vatican. Additionally, transportation in the area was enhanced by the new roads built as part of the complex. Based on building history and literary records, extensive use of the area really started after completion of Hadrian’s monument.

Since so little of the upper structure remains, there has been significant difficulty in reconstructing details of the upper levels. However, what remains of the base makes it fairly clear that the building was a five-tiered, circular structure. It can be inferred from the surviving structure that the Mausoleum was nearly 40 meters high and spanned a diameter of nearly ninety meters. While the interior structural walls were mostly of concrete and brick, the external surfaces were faced with travertine and Luna marble and finely decorated with a frieze and other embellishments.

The analysis will begin at the first level since it is not possible to analyze the ground floor.

Here the remains of Hadrian and members of the imperial family up to Caracalla were laid to rest. Originally, the room’s ceiling was decorated with stucco and the walls covered in marble: in particular, proof of the presence of this marble comes from the holes from the iron hooks that were used to secure the marble. The urns had to be placed on the lintels inside the two large niches that open out on the walls.

To the left, is a marble commemorative plague-bearing some of the verses written by Hadrian, dedicated to his soul and made famous by Marguerite Yourcenar in her novel Memoirs of Hadrian, published in 1951.

Originally linked the atrium of Hadrian's Mausoleum with the Urns Room, climbing a difference in height of over 12 meters: the funeral procession carrying the emperor's remains passed along here. 3 meters wide and about 6 meters high, the ramp is made of brick using a sophisticated technique of imperial architecture.

The original floor would have had a central runner in travertine stone with edges in black and white mosaic, still partly visible. The walls would have been embellished with marble slabs up to a height of about three meters. On the vault, originally covered in stucco, there are still four air outlets required to let in light and for the transport of materials.

In correspondence with the transformation of the mausoleum into a fortress, the ramp was buried because regarded as easily attackable by the enemy: It was only reopened in the early nineteenth century.

It derives its semi-circular shape form that of the cylinder of Hadrian's Mausoleum. The current structure owes much to Alexander VI who, at the end of the fifteenth century, brought impressive works to this part of the castle, hence its name, the Alexander VI courtyard. The pope's coat of arms appears on the well to the left, which drew from a large cistern dating from Roman times located below ground level: the three manholes in travertine that open in correspondence with the cistern can still be seen today.

At the time of Leo X Medici, the courtyard hosted theatrical performances: this is why it was also called the theatre courtyard.

A catapult and numerous stone balls are also preserved here, which were originally thrown at enemies from the walls. The courtyard leads to the historical prisons, the oil mills-food stores- and the stove, that is, Clement VII’s bathroom: the ticket office will give you all the information you need to visit it.

This can be found in the papal apartments that extend out to the left. From the fifteenth century onwards, the popes decided to built apartments fitted with every comfort in the Castle. They made good use of them especially as places of refuge when they were forced to flee the Vatican. Clement VII, for example, stayed there for seven months during the Sack of Rome in 1527.

The statue of St.Michael the Archangel sculpted by Raffaello da Montelupo in 1544 for the highest terrace at Castel Sant’Angelo stands in the center; it was transferred here in the eighteenth century and from that moment onwards the courtyard was known as the Angel's Courtyard.

Heading towards the staircase leading to the upper ring we pass in front of the Leo X chapel’s aedicule designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti; Raffaello da Montelupo later modified the aedicule.

They are part of the complete apartments built by this pope between late sixteenth and early seventeenth.

It is also good to mention that this where one of the most modern and luxury bathrooms of Rome is placed in those times. Decorated with marble, gold, and paintings on the ceiling makes this bathroom a designated place for the pope’s use.

It is a circular corridor built in the mid-seventeenth century by Alexander VII Chigi: the pope delimited by having an open wall with a series of arches made and built on top of a previous ledge, partially similar to what Pius iV had done a century earlier on the opposite side of the building.

Looking out from one of the openings, you have a magnificent view of Rome and the Vatican. So, on the left you can see the Santo Spirito complex, built by Sixtus IV of Rovere as a public hospital around 1480- at the same time as the Sistine Chapel- and behind it, the Janiculum Hill; in the middle is St. Peter’s Basilica dominated by Michelangelo’s dome, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s colonnade and via della Conciliazione, designed in the fascist period; The Vatican palaces are on the right.

These are four adjoining rooms that house the most significant part of the impressive collection of weapons and armor at Castel Sant’Angelo that includes more than six thousand pieces. The origin of this collection dates back to 1925 when Castel became a national museum and was chosen to house not only works of art but also military memorabilia.

In the first room, there is a section devoted to the Risorgimento or the movement that led to the independence and unity of Italy: here we find the uniform of Senator Francesco Sturbinetti, commander of the Republican state founded in 1849 following a revolt in the Papal States.