Castel Sant’Angelo
Today, the imposing fortress that is Castel Sant’Angelo towers over the ancient City of Rome. As a national museum, Castel Sant’Angelo has become a major tourist site and is home to an impressive collection of art and historical displays. Because it is so large and prominent on the Roman skyline, Castel Sant’Angelo also serves as the perfect place to host fireworks displays, which has been a tradition since medieval times. Castel Sant’Angelo is most noted however, for its changing historical role.
1: Present Day View of the Castel by Night For nearly 2,000 years, this large edifice has occupied an important place in Roman life and has been part of the dynamics of nearly two millennia. Known as the “Eternal City,” Rome has been a stage for the theatrics of empire and conquest, piety and pilgrimage, and conflict and modernity. While it is not often prominently thought of as such, Castel Sant’Angelo is perhaps one of the most central architectural landmarks to the history and development of the Western world. Since the times of imperial Rome to present, Castel Sant’Angelo has occupied several distinct periods of use and disuse, which are each historically significant. Because of the relative brevity of this paper and the relative extensiveness of Roman history in which Castel Sant’Angelo is enveloped, I will provide a brief overview of themost significant historical periods involved in its evolution. As such, I will attempt to explain the role it played during each time period in four distinct phases: (i) the imperial origins of the site, (ii) the transitional period from the fall of Rome to the 1000s, (iii) the relationship between the Church and the castle, and, finally, (iv) a brief discussion of Castel Sant’Angelo since the 19th century.
Built in the first century by Roman Emperor Hadrian, the current structure of Castel Sant’Angelo on the banks of the Tiber River was originally intended to be a tomb. While it would eventually become known as “Hadrian’s Mausoleum,” because it served as a burial site for a series of emperor’s after Hadrian, most historians agree that Hadrian probably meant it to be a “tomb” (a “sephulcrum”) just for himself and his immediate family—not a full fledged “mausoleum.” Hadrianeum then, as it might be more accurately called, was intended to preserve the name, legacy, and image of Hadrian. While image and memory are constant themes for ancient Roman imperial burials, it was perhaps even more important to Hadrian.
2: A Historical Reconstruction of Hadrianeum As The adopted son of Trajan, and also born during the reign of Vespasian, Hadrian was only a generation removed from some of the greatest ancient Roman structures, such as the Coliseum . Born into a tradition of creating grandiose and eleaborate monuments, Hadrian’s burial site would be forced to compete with those of his predecessors and to contend with the potential creations of his successors. It is apparent that Hadrian wanted to call attention to himself through his memorial because of its location. By tradition, the dead in ancient times were buried outside the city walls in an area typically known as the necropolis (“city of the dead”). But Hadrianeum’s unusual proximity to the flood prone Tiber River and its location in the ager vaticanus (“the Vatican Fields” which at the time was a Christian necropolis, or the Fields of Nero, which later became known collectively as the “Borgo”) proved to be uniquely related to a rival monument. The Mausoleum of Augustus, which had been the burial site for emperors from Augustus up to Hadrian, was positioned in a similarly flood prone area up the river in a prominent location. It is apparent that Hadrian used the Mausoleum of Augustus as an inspiration for his own memorial. The outermost cylindrical wall of the Mausoleum of Augustus is 87 meters in diameter and 12 meters tall, while that of Hadrianeum is 86.30 meters and 12 meters respectively. Of course, Hadrianeum surpassed the Mausoleum of Augustus architecturally and was more complex. It consisted of a series of walls and ramps which was, most fundamentally, a square base with two cylindrical levels situated in the center and tangent to the base. The building was covered by what is thought to have been Parian (or possibly Luna) marble and decorated by elaborate marble (although there is some confusion between historians as to whether they were actually marble or gilded bronze) statues of men and horses and an evergreen garden on the roof. On the interior, Hadrianeum was originally quite solid, navigable only by an elaborate series of ramps and vaulted chambers which served it well as a burial site. Also important is Hadrian’s construction of a bridge to the site, the Pons Aelius, which served to perpetuate the memorial by creating another route out of the city and across the river. This ensured that people would continue to interact with the site long after Hadrian’s death.
3: A top down look at Hadrianeum and the Pons Aelius
4: Augustus's Mausoleum, which served as a model for Hadrian Hadrianeum’s location outside of the city began to prove even more crucial as Rome’s days of empire began to fade, and the city fell prone to plunder and attack. By 217, the complex had fallen into the hands of the state (in part due to its large upkeep expenses). It was in this year that Emperor Aurelius constructed his noted series of walls, which were intended to protect the city from external attack. Due to its sheer size and durability, Hadrianeum was included as part of the Aurelian wall in 271 which marks its first historically documented transformation toward military use. For the next thousand years, all of Rome experienced a millennial decline, and, as such, so did Hadrianeum. The contents of the tombs were raided by the end of the fifth century after the fall of imperial Rome, most likely by Goths. In the sixth century, after the Goths had conquered Rome, Totila converted Hadrianeum into a veritable bastion for the defense of Rome. Realizing the military significance of the location and the need to protect Rome from invasion in a time of political uncertainty, Hadrianeum was fortified. Because over time, the Aurelian walls proved insufficient and indefensible, the defense strategy was reevaluated. Because of the expansive circumference of the Aurelian Wall, military leaders were forced to refocus their efforts to a smaller more concentrated area of Rome.
Topographically, the hills of Rome made the “Borgo” area between Hadrianeum and the Vatican fields a very strategic area—because of the way incoming armies would approach the city, if the Borgo could be defended, so could the city of Rome. Over the next 500 years, fortifications were developed, destroyed, and redeveloped around the area of the Borgo, employing Hadrianeum as a fortress. Physical modifications were limited primarily to military modifications to the castle to allow quartering of troops there and the construction of a wall around the Borgo with additional external fortifications at the site of Castel Sant’Angelo. By the 9th century, Charlemange had also occupied Rome and he improved upon the existing fortification in the Borgo, where he was staying, including the newly created Vatican Basilica.
Late in the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great reportedly saw an apparition of the Archangel Michael on top of Hadrianeum. During this time, Rome was experiencing a severe plague, which subsided shortly after Pope Gregory’s encounter with the St. Michael—the angelic commander of God’s army. It is through this legendary encounter that the name of Hadrianeum gradually became Castel Sant’Angelo—which means the “Castle of the Holy Angel.” And, certainly the papacy had grown interested in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Because of its proximity to the Vatican fields—an early Christian burial site—many clergy members and pilgrims commuted from the Latern (the early home of the Church) to the Vatican via the Pons Aelius, past Castel Sant’Angelo. Castel Sant’Angelo and the Vatican were really on one property in terms of fortification, whoever controlled one also controlled the other. Thus, the popes had a vested interest in being able to access their important Christian pilgrimage sites.
5: The Current Angel Atop the Castel Over the years, the popes became interested in the site not only because of its convenient location but also because of the leverage yielded by controlling such a crucial location for the security of Rome—and in this case, control meant power. By the 1000s, Rome entered a period of rule by the elite and Castel Sant’Angelo changed hands almost continuously until the 14th century when it finally fell into the hands of the papacy for good. After centuries of disputes, enraged Roman citizen took out their anger on the fortress nearly destroying it in April 1379, which marked the beginning of a period of significant improvements to Castel Sant’Angelo by the Church.
During the Renaissance period, the Castle underwent many changes as a result of the papacy. In 1527, a large Protestant army invaded Rome and forced Pope Clement VII to flee from the St. Peter’s to Castel Sant’Angelo via the Passetto di Borgo. Outnumbered, Clement was forced to reside in the Castel Sant’Angelo for months until the occupation ended. In the aftermath of the reformation, Clement’s successor, Paul III Farnese, performed a series of notable upgrades to the Castel Sant’Angelo—renovations to living areas and papal apartments—in case such a fate were ever to reoccur. Paul III also attempted to renovate the Roman city wall system to provide defense to the entire city, but this ultimately failed after realizing that Rome could be defended by simply fortifying the Borgo.
6: A Present Day View of the Passetto di Borgo Beginning in the 16th century, one of the primary functions of the Castel Sant’Angelo was as a prison and execution site. Everyone from common prisoners to such freethinkers as Giordano Bruno to foreigners such as Leo Africanus (al-Hasan al-Wazzan) were kept.
By 1870 Castel Sant’Angelo fell into disuse after the unification of Italy and the construction of retaining walls for the banks of the Tiber. At this time restoration work began in a move for historical preservation and appreciation and the use of conventional military techniques, which rendered a castle outmoded. By the early 1900s, Castel Sant’Angelo had been fully converted into a museum which it still functions to this day.
The most surprising thing about Castel Sant’Angelo to me was its historicity and sense of eternality. Rome is known as the “Eternal City” and I think there could not be a better symbol of that eternality and sense of interaction with history than Castel Sant’Angelo. With its distinctive ties to the most important periods in Roman history, the castle serves as a living representation of Rome. From its use during ancient times as a great monument to serving as a medieval bastion to a papal fortress, Castel Sant’Angelo is a timeless memorial to an important historical legacy.
