Castel Sant'Angelo

The Castel Sant'Angelo is a building in Rome, one with a long and chequered past.

castel sant'angelo

It was built on the right bank of the Tiber, between 135 and 139, by Roman Emperor Hadrian, as a mausoleum for himself and his family. In its original form, the mausoleum was built as a cylinder, with a garden top and the golden quadriga of the emperor. In the following centuries, the mausoleum was converted into a military fortress, and included in the Aurelian Walls. The popes fortified the mausoleum, which became a castle, since the 14th century; Pope Nicholas III connected the castle to St. Peter's Basilica by a covered fortified corridor called the Passetto di Borgo. The fortress was the refuge of Pope Clement VII from the siege of Charles V Landsknecht during the Sack of Rome (1527), in which Benvenuto Cellini was a participant.

Sant'Angelo also served as a prison for the Popes. One of its prisoners was Giordano Bruno, who had been imprisoned here for 6 years, and the prison was also the set of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca.

An 18th-century bronze statue of an angel sheathing a sword surmounts the tomb, in reference to an old tradition that during the plague of 590 an angel appered on the top of the mausoleum, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of the plague. This event gave the name to the castle.

Now the castle is a museum, Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rome".


Last update July 22th, 2007