Description
Hadrian's Mausoleum, today's Castel Sant'Angelo, is a huge stone cylinder on the right bank of the Tiber, next to the Vatican. It began as an imperial tomb and became a fortress, a prison and a refuge for the popes: today it is a museum you climb level by level.
You reach it over the Ponte Sant'Angelo, lined with ten marble angels carved in the 1600s. Inside, the Roman spiral ramp winds through the drum up to the room of the urns, where the emperors once rested.
Higher up everything changes: the Renaissance courtyards and the apartments of Paul III, frescoed by Perino del Vaga, are the rooms of a royal palace. Nearby is the Stufetta of Clement VII, a private bathroom from 1525 decorated with secular ornaments.
Down below, instead, the prisons remain, like the Cella Sammalò, where the condemned man was lowered from above and had barely room to stand. At the top, the terrace of the Angel opens the view over all of Rome.
Hadrian started the works in AD 135, and Antoninus Pius finished them in 139, a year after the emperor's death. Hadrian and the emperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties, down to Caracalla, were buried here. In 403 the tomb was absorbed into the Aurelian Walls and became a stronghold.
Its present name comes from a vision. In 590 Rome was prostrated by the plague and, so tradition says, Pope Gregory the Great saw the archangel Michael sheathing his sword on top of the massive building: the epidemic was about to end.
From then on the popes made it their refuge, linked to St. Peter's Basilica by the Passetto di Borgo, the protected corridor ordered by Nicholas III. Here Clement VII held out against the Landsknechts during the Sack of Rome in 1527.
It was also a feared prison. The goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini escaped in 1538-39 by lowering himself down the outer wall on a rope of bedsheets, and broke a leg. Cagliostro, in 1789, got a comfortable cell instead. In 932, meanwhile, the noblewoman Marozia celebrated her third wedding in the emperors' burial chamber, until her son Alberic II had her arrested.
Don't miss
• The spiral ramp.
• The apartments of Paul III.
• The Stufetta of Clement VII.
• The terrace of the Angel.
Did you know?
• In the third act of Puccini's Tosca, Tosca throws herself from the castle's ramparts.
• The bronze angel watching over the top dates from 1753, the work of Peter Anton von Verschaffelt: there were others before it.
• The castle has been a museum since 1906.
You reach it over the Ponte Sant'Angelo, lined with ten marble angels carved in the 1600s. Inside, the Roman spiral ramp winds through the drum up to the room of the urns, where the emperors once rested.
Higher up everything changes: the Renaissance courtyards and the apartments of Paul III, frescoed by Perino del Vaga, are the rooms of a royal palace. Nearby is the Stufetta of Clement VII, a private bathroom from 1525 decorated with secular ornaments.
Down below, instead, the prisons remain, like the Cella Sammalò, where the condemned man was lowered from above and had barely room to stand. At the top, the terrace of the Angel opens the view over all of Rome.
Hadrian started the works in AD 135, and Antoninus Pius finished them in 139, a year after the emperor's death. Hadrian and the emperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties, down to Caracalla, were buried here. In 403 the tomb was absorbed into the Aurelian Walls and became a stronghold.
Its present name comes from a vision. In 590 Rome was prostrated by the plague and, so tradition says, Pope Gregory the Great saw the archangel Michael sheathing his sword on top of the massive building: the epidemic was about to end.
From then on the popes made it their refuge, linked to St. Peter's Basilica by the Passetto di Borgo, the protected corridor ordered by Nicholas III. Here Clement VII held out against the Landsknechts during the Sack of Rome in 1527.
It was also a feared prison. The goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini escaped in 1538-39 by lowering himself down the outer wall on a rope of bedsheets, and broke a leg. Cagliostro, in 1789, got a comfortable cell instead. In 932, meanwhile, the noblewoman Marozia celebrated her third wedding in the emperors' burial chamber, until her son Alberic II had her arrested.
Don't miss
• The spiral ramp.
• The apartments of Paul III.
• The Stufetta of Clement VII.
• The terrace of the Angel.
Did you know?
• In the third act of Puccini's Tosca, Tosca throws herself from the castle's ramparts.
• The bronze angel watching over the top dates from 1753, the work of Peter Anton von Verschaffelt: there were others before it.
• The castle has been a museum since 1906.