Borgo Pio: The Pilgrims' Village
Why is it significant?
Stroll down the cobbled street, closed to traffic, between low ochre houses with shutters and flowerpots, laundry above and café tables below. Nuns hurry past, a priest stops for an espresso, a waiter calls out to a neighbour.
Key Facts
| Place | Borgo Pio: The Pilgrims' Village |
|---|---|
| Address | Borgo Pio, 00193 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90400, 12.46030 |
| Part of Walk | Pilgrims, Popes and Swiss Guards: Rome's Vatican and the Medieval Borgo |
| Generated | Generated |
Stroll down the cobbled street, closed to traffic, between low ochre houses with shutters and flowerpots, laundry above and café tables below. Nuns hurry past, a priest stops for an espresso, a waiter calls out to a neighbour. It feels like a village, and that is exactly what it has always been: the village at the gate of St Peter's.
The word Borgo itself is foreign. From the eighth century, communities from beyond the Alps settled around St Peter's to care for pilgrims from their homelands: Franks, Frisians, Lombards and Saxons from England. The Saxon quarter, the Schola Saxonum, was founded, tradition says, by King Ine of Wessex, and their Germanic word for a settlement, burh, is the usual explanation for the name Borgo. Romans called the Saxon corner simply in Saxia, and you'll meet that word again in a few minutes.
For a medieval pilgrim, arriving here after months on the road was the end of the world and the gate of heaven at once. Inns, money-changers, relic-sellers, beggars and pickpockets crowded these alleys. Pilgrims bought little metal badges showing the apostles Peter and Paul to sew on their hats, proof that they had made it to Rome.
This particular street takes its name from Pope Pius the Fourth, who in the 1560s enclosed the northern part of the Borgo within new walls and laid out new streets, a district nicknamed the Città Pia. But most of the old Borgo did not survive the twentieth century... and in a few minutes you'll see why. Streets like this one are a glimpse of what the whole quarter once looked like.
Notice the little painted Madonnas on the corners, the madonnelle, often with a lamp: for centuries those lamps were almost the only light in the streets at night. Now cut south across the Borgo, across the wide avenue, to the river side of the district and a huge old hospital, with a strange revolving opening in its wall.