Castel Sant'Angelo: Tomb, Fortress, Prison, Opera Stage
Why is it significant?
Tilt your head back at the huge brick drum, layered like a wedding cake: Roman tomb at the bottom, papal fortress in the middle, Renaissance apartments near the top, and at the very summit a bronze angel sheathing a sword. Few buildings on earth have changed jobs so many times.
Key Facts
| Place | Castel Sant'Angelo: Tomb, Fortress, Prison, Opera Stage |
|---|---|
| Address | Lungotevere Castello 50, 00193 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90300, 12.46630 |
| Part of Walk | Pilgrims, Popes and Swiss Guards: Rome's Vatican and the Medieval Borgo |
| Generated | Generated |
Tilt your head back at the huge brick drum, layered like a wedding cake: Roman tomb at the bottom, papal fortress in the middle, Renaissance apartments near the top, and at the very summit a bronze angel sheathing a sword. Few buildings on earth have changed jobs so many times.
It began as the mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian, completed in 139 AD, a year after his death, and once clad in white marble with statues along its rim. The ashes of emperors were placed here for about eighty years, down to Caracalla. Then, as Rome walled itself in against the barbarians, the tomb was turned into a bastion. For the next thousand years, whoever held it held the bridge, and whoever held the bridge controlled the road to St Peter's.
The name comes from the year 590. Plague was ravaging Rome, and the new pope, Gregory the Great, led a penitential procession through the streets. As it approached the bridge, the story goes, he saw the Archangel Michael above the mausoleum, sliding his sword back into its sheath, and the plague came to an end. The angel on top today is a bronze of 1753 by the Flemish sculptor Peter Anton von Verschaffelt.
Inside were prisons, and some famous prisoners. The goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, locked up here in 1538, escaped by knotting bedsheets into a rope and lowering himself down the walls, breaking his leg on the way. He tells the whole adventure, at great length and with no modesty at all, in his autobiography. And in 1900 Giacomo Puccini set the last act of his opera Tosca on the castle's terrace, from which the heroine, betrayed and desperate, throws herself into the void.
Walk round to the castle's western side and look for a long, high wall striking off towards the Vatican, with battlements and a covered walkway along its top. It was a pope's escape route. Follow it along the street at its foot, into the Borgo.