Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome

Castel Sant’Angelo is the vast circular building that began as Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum and now serves as a museum. Hadrian commissioned this family tomb during the reign of the Roman Empire, and Antoninus Pius brought the work to completion in the year one hundred thirty-nine. Its ancient form combined a marble-clad base, a huge drum, planted earth, and a monumental chariot bearing Hadrian’s image.

Hadrian’s ashes came here with those of Sabina and Lucius Aelius; later imperial burials continued until Caracalla. The heavy masonry then acquired a radically different role when it entered Rome’s defensive walls under Honorius, becoming a stronghold beyond the Tiber. As local tradition has it, Pope Gregory the Great saw the archangel Michael sheathe his sword here during the plague of five hundred ninety, a sign that the epidemic would end.

That story gave the castle its angelic name. Notice the angel figure on the roofline: the sculpture now there was made by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt in the eighteenth century. Popes later relied on this place as refuge, residence, tribunal, and prison, with a fortified passage linking it to Saint Peter’s. Clement the Seventh escaped here during the Sack of Rome, and Giordano Bruno spent years imprisoned within these walls.