The emperor Hadrian took a decision of constructing a mausoleum for himself, for his family and for his successors around 130 AD. The place that was chosen was a part of so called Domitia’s Gardens that lied in the neighborhood of Campo Vaticano, on the right bank of the Tiber river, in front of Campo Marzio.
The project followed the model of the mausoleum erected for Augustus more than one century before. It had a squared stone and brick base, a cylindric body that was 21 meters high and 64 meters wide, and above it there was a mould made of ground that was covered by cypresses. The whole construction was surmounted by a kind of little temple with a gilted bronze quadriga with a statue of the emperor himself.
Hadrian was buried in this mausoleum in 139 AD, one year after he had died in Baiae – since it wasn’t ready yet in the moment of his death his successor Antoninus Pius was obliged to keep on with works. Visiting Castel San’Angelo you can still see the burial chamber where the urn with Hadrian’s ashes was placed.
But not only Hadrian was buried there – all the ashes of the emperors ruling over the Roman Empire were kept there – the procedure lasted till Caracalla, who died in 217AD.
There are several parts belonging to the original construction that were preserved till nowadays: the ample vaulted vestibule, central room for the urn with Hadrian’s and other emperors’ ashes mentioned above, the heliocoidal ramp – along it there were cells for prisoners (it was one of the function of the mausoleum under papal rule, and among prisoners there were Benvenuto Cellini and Giordano Bruno – the last one was imprisoned there for six years and left his cell in 1600 to be burnt alive in Campo dei Fiori).
In 401AD Honorius decided to incorporate the structure into the Aurelian Walls since the structure was mighty and could keep the role of the fortress. Some years later – in 410 AD – the urns were destroyed during Alaric’s Sack of Rome. In 537, the Goths destroyed the bronze elements and stone statues. Probably at the beginning of the Xth century the mausoleum was transformed to be a real fortress of the Vatican Palaces, and in the XIV century a secret walkway – corridor (known now as the Passetto di Borgo) was built on purpose to link the fortress with St. Peter’s Basilica. That passage was used during the famous Sacco di Roma (Sack of Rome) in 1527 when the pope Clement VII was obliged to run away from his Vatican palace to hide away in the Castel San’Angelo that was the safest place in the whole eternal city while the troops of Charles V were plundering all over Rome.
How about the name? Once the structure was known as Hadrian’s Mausoleum, now it is just called Castel Sant’Angelo. To explain the origin of the name we have to go back to the end of the VI century AD – the horrible plague was decimating the city inhabitants and no medicine was known to cure the people. People could only pray and have faith. A lot of prayers and processions were held and one of them was organized by the pope Gregory who passed to the history as the Gregory the Great – he was also a biographer of Saint Benedict, the founder of the Montecassino Abbey. The procession started at Lateran and was going towards Vatican. As the tradition says when the procession led by the pope arrived to the bridge Aelios (constructed by Hadrian and now known as the Elio bridge) the people could see the Archangel Michael who stood on the top of the Hadrian’s mausoleum and was putting the sword into the scabbard – and that gesture was understood as the sign the plague would finish soon. And, in fact, the plague ceased and the name we use today should remind us of what happened more than 1500 years ago. In 1536 Raffaello da Montelupo created the marble statue that was placed of the top of the castle that was exchanged in 1753 for the bronze one made by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt who was a Flemish artist operating in Rome in the XVIII century. The statue made by Montelupo can still be admired in the inner court of the castle and the Flemish one is still on the top of the castle, instead.
Nowadays the castle holds the museum whose name is Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo. You can see ancient elements and beautiful Renaissaince rooms prepared for the pope Paul III – he wanted to be sure that if the eventual siege of the city was to repeat he or his successors would have an appropriate place to stay.
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