The Capitoline Hill and the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli
Summit of the Capitoline Hill - the terrace with a spectacular view of the Tiber and the whole city - was the center of political and religious power of ancient Rome, the location of the oldest and most venerated temples, the unalterable destination of the victory parades of consuls and emperors. For this reason no small uproar was aroused when the emperor Constantine, after his victory over Maxentius in 312 AD, refused to ascend the Capitoline Hill to preside over the sacrifices to Jupiter. Whether it was his Christian faith that prevented him from carrying out the pagan rituals is an object of much debate among historians, given that there was no shortage of consequences for his decidedly audacious choices - which were not always of Christian inspiration, as in the case of the killing of his son Crispo and his wife Fausta. As for the Capitoline Hill, death was always only two steps away: from the Tarpean Cliff, traitors against the state were thrown over the edge into the void. It was also here - presumably at the Centum Gradus, the mythical hundred steps down to the level of the river - where the first political murder in Roman history occurred: the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus and 300 of his supporters in 133 BC. The crime not only blocked Gracchus's reforms in favor of the plebians, it marked the beginning of the slow decline of republican politics into dictatorial forms.

The stories related to the devastating plague of 1348 are of a different cast. They include the exceptional staircase to the Church of the Ara Coeli built to commemorate the end of this plague, and the shocking homicide in 1354 of Cola di Rienzo who was spotted by his enemies in the middle of a crowd thanks to the gold bracelets he wore on his wrist. The fascinating Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, which rises where there once stood the temple of Juno Moneta, is a crossroads of fantastic art and crucial events in the history of the city that we will follow with enthusiasm. But on this hill there is also room for the grand architecture of Michelangelo: the marvellous and slightly divergent symmetry of the piazza expresses his love of classical beauty and solid geometry, which have enchanted the world. The projects, the loves, and the torments of a now-mature and famous Michelangelo in Counterreformation Rome of Pope Paul III, which increasingly stifled freedom, are themes that will be fully explored in our guided visit (for this theme see also our Rome at Twilight - Group Tours Rome).

Portico di Ottavia, Theatre of Marcellus, Theatre of Pompey
The area of the Campo Marzio (Fields of Mars) is one of the most beautiful and full of secrets. It has the charm of proximity to the Tiber and the Tiber Island amidst its waters, and it has the continuity of uninterrupted habitation from antiquity to our time, with the astounding mosaic of architecture that this has generated. This area is inscribed with key moments in the public and private vicissitudes of the great men of the 1st century BC. In our guided visit we will follow the enterprises and the loves of Pompey and Julius Cesar across the Mediterranean, we will discuss their ideas and the propaganda with which they battled until the definitive dominance of Julius Cesar - thereafter transformed into myth in 44 BC by the stabbings of the conspirators who finished him off under the statue of the deceased Pompey, in the hall of his Senate.

Then we will investigate the love story of Octavian Augusts and Livia, presumed and actual (of Livia the sources have given us a less-than-virtuous image), Augustus's debated relations with his sister (to whom the rebuilding of the grandiose Portico di Ottavia was dedicated), his daughter Julia and his faithful friend Agrippus in search of a secure heir to entrust with the new empire in the absence of a son. In front of the Theatre of Marcellus, which Octavian Augustus dedicated to the memory of his nephew who died prematurely, we will follow the anxieties of the emperor and his incessant strategies to establish his lineage for the empire, now that he had rewritten the destiny of Rome.

In 410 AD the siege and sack of Rome by Alaric and his Goths - the first barbarian invasion that the Roman aristocracy had to suffer after centuries of world domination - disseminated panic among the Romans who sought refuge in the Basilicas of the Apostles. Still, even under the shadow of swords, love doesn't sleep. Galla Placidia, daughter of the Emperor Onorio, had been taken hostage by the Goths during the negotiations for the liberation of Rome, and she caught the attention of the Gothic prince Ataulfo. He fell in love with her and married her in 414 with traditional Roman ceremonies. By this time he was the new king of the Goths, elected at the death of Alaric. Of their lives and of what happened in those years when the ancient gods died under the supremacy of the Christian God and their marble statues were reduced to lime dust in the furnaces, we will lead you to discover in the most fascinating places.

History changes shape with the passage of time, and the city transforms: In this same area, eight centuries after Augustus, the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria (church of the Holy Angel at the fishery) was installed in an ancient temple; and directly under the Portico di Ottavia, there was the fish market. Here, under the imposing architecture where Romans used to walk, admiring magnificent sculptures, now echoed with the shouting of fish vendors. Compared to Imperial Rome there were different types of merchandise and food, rituals and forms of power, laws and tariffs to pay. In fact a medieval engraving on the portico instructed the fishermen to consign to the Conservators (city council of noblemen) any fish that exceeded a pre-established size. This tax was not a monetary sum, but the fish itself. Ancient barter had returned to use alongside of sales for money. This is confirmed by the rarity of gold and silver coins the archeological finds from this time, and by the collapse of the economy and long distance commerce - likewise indicated by the scarce archeological traces of luxury goods like jewels, mirrors, and refined ceramics. (For this theme see also our Underground Rome - Group Tours Rome).

Major transformations to the urban fabric and the economy of the city had already taken place around the middle of the 6th century during the terrible Gothic war that devastated Rome for nearly 20 years, almost completely erasing its ancient imperial face. In the final phases of the war, tombs and small burials without sarcophagi appeared all over the heart of the city, in the Colosseum, the Imperial Forums, the Crypt of Balbus. Such practice was forbidden and inadmissible in imperial Rome where life and death were clearly separated and death stayed outside the walls, far from the city of the living. It was however a common phenomenon in Medieval Rome and typical of its urban landscape.

The Jewish Quarter
The intricate arrangement of streets and palaces in the Jewish Ghetto enclose an equally dense interlace of human histories, unfortunately often marked by the repeated violence that the ancient Roman Jewish community was subjected to over the centuries. The frequent persecutions and shaming practices in the public squares (the unfortunate victim was bound hand and foot to a post for hours or even days) were aggravated further in July of 1555 by the orders of the newly-elected pope Paul IV Carafa. He issued a bull "Cum nimis asbsurdum" that imposed severe limitations on the movements and activities of the Jews. In fact, they were obliged in every city to reside exclusively in the restricted quarters assigned to them, distinctly separate from Christian neighborhoods and furnished with a single entry gate under surveillance. They were required to re-enter before sundown. In addition, so that they might be clearly identifiable, the men were made to wear a visible beret and the women a distinctive marking.

But the proscriptions, ever more numerous and designed by the church to humiliate the Jews into converting, did not stop here. The Jews were forbidden, among other things, to eat and drink familiarly with Christians, yet they were obliged to attend the interminable preachings every Saturday at one of the local churches. In September of 1553 thousands of copies of the Talmud and other Hebrew books were burned in Piazza Campo dei Fiori after a series of violent searches and sequestrations of the houses of the Jews.Because of the shortage of space and the overcrowding, the ghetto is also characterized by very narrow streets lined with precarious constructions with as many as six or seven storeys. Via della Reginella and other streets that were the theatre for the important events and stories that we will cover, still offer a clear memory of their past.

Strangely, it will be a walled-up window in the facade of Palazzo Mattei that will brighten our journey: a love story tied to a night of games of chance, to an offense, and to a promise of love. The beautiful Piazza Mattei will bring us back to more pleasant projects and to the caress of water. Perhaps completed by Bernini, the fountain in the piazza enchants visitors with its lightness and magical exchange between young boys, dolphins, and turtles. It is not surprising that this fountain is the favorite of the Romans.

Piazza Campo dei Fiori, Via Papalis, Via Giulia
In 1420, Pope Martin V, a member of the Colonna family (one of Rome's most powerful families), returned triumphantly to Rome. In doing so, he restored the political and administrative structures of the pontifical state to Rome after the papacy had been in Avignon for nearly seventy years. For another forty, popes elected in Avignon had opposed those elected in Rome. Romans flocked to celebrate the pope, shouting "Long live Pope Martin, long live Pope Martin," hoping that the pope would finally take care of the streets and the aqueducts, bring an end to the frequent attacks of bandits, and breathe new life into the city's economy.

Pope Martin V, just as every newly-elected pope, traveled on a white horse followed by a procession of cardinals, passed through the streets and squares in the center of Rome that led from St. Peter's Basilica to the Basilica of St. John in Lateran. They followed the famous Via Papalis, the street of the Pope, where our itinerary unfolds.

Pope Martin V, however, added something essential to this tradition: he reinforced his power with the right to luxury. On his head was a miter (the elongated headpiece worn by the pope) carved entirely of gold by the Florentine artist Lorenzo Ghiberti. Ghiberti was the creator of the golden doors of the Baptistery of Florence (on this topic, refer to another of our tours, The Florence of the Medici). The golden headdress surrounded him with a divine spark and lifted him upwards from the earth. Already at the dawn of the Renaissance, power and luxury had forged an unbreakable bond.

One of the central places of the Via Papalis was Piazza Campo dei Fiori, a dense crossroads of stories and passions, the last stop of pilgrims come to Rome before taking Via del Pellegrino (the street dedicated to them) and reaching the Basilica of St. Peter.

It is not by chance that in this area, by the 14th century, we have the record of many hostelries and inns where the pilgrims could refresh themselves and sleep. Perhaps they might also have at their disposition those little diversions that the lone traveler at times does not scorn, because, in as much as the voyage was for the instruction of faith, it was not necessarily exhausted in that alone. Certainly one of these inns, la Locanda della Vacca (the Tavern of the Cow), seems to have offered to generous and affable pilgrims the company of comely Roman women. At least the proprietess of the inn, Vannozza Cattannei, had for a long time lent her charms to Pope Alexander VI Borgia, infamous pope from the end of the 15th century. Cattannei was not only one of Rome's courtesans - a group that formed a very high percentage of the city's population as revealed by the census from the beginning of the 16th century - she was also the mother of four of the Borgia Pope's many children.

Though either the circumstances or the ardour of the Pope changed, because she no longer sweetened his nights once he became pope. Well over 60 years old, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, at the moment of his election to the sacred pontifical threshold, had taken a new lover a couple of years earlier. She was the beautiful, barely twenty-year-old Giulia Farnese, by whom he had two children. It is not surprising that he was terribly jealous of her, to the point that he wrote her a letter, which has come down to us, commanding her not to go near her legitimate husband (whom he called the stallion) at the pain of excommunication and eternal damnation.

The amorous passions of Alexander VI are nothing compared to the crimes this man committed. He wove plots and power plays, he bought and sold ecclesiastical offices for himself and his children, and he systematically manipulated every conclave that he participated in down to the last one, from which he emerged victorious, thanks to the extensive monetary transactions and to the ceding of no small number of territories and palaces (one of which is on our itinerary). He was surpassed only by his son Cesare, who went so far as to kill his brother and the second husband of his sister, the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia. Her life, in the hands of her father, was nothing other than a means by which to bind and dissolve alliances. Lucrezia, instructed in Latin, Greek, and the love of the arts by Carlo Canale - the fourth cultivated husband of Vannozza - was married off by her father at age 13 to Giovanni Sforza. At age 18, after her father had invalidated her first marriage, Lucrezia was remarried to the natural son of Alfonso II of Aragon, King of Naples. At the death of this husband, which certainly occurred at the hands of her brother, she was then given as a bride to Alfonso I of Este. She died in Ferrara at age 39.

Across from the Tavern of the Cow, in the little alley called vicolo del Gallo, we will cover the salient moments of the Borgia family, inserting them into their historical context to understand how there is a great deal of Renaissance history even in the scandals. Pope Alexander VI, Pope Julius II, Pope Leo X, Pope Clement VII and others you will come to know, were in fact the promoters of great transformations in the city and their names are written in the great artworks of the century. Notwithstanding that it was not they who caused the big cultural changes of the Renaissance, it was they who desired halls and palaces in the new style of the times, it was they who wanted frescoes and paintings for their rooms. The promotion of art was a necessary duty, certainly it was also a great form of propaganda, though nonetheless it was one of the many luxuries that a famous man could not dispense with. Credit goes to the artists and intellectuals for having created the forms and the stylistic language that gave expression and creative energy to the social and economic currents of their time. Their visions also expressed the will of the powerful. The result has given us infinite wonders, and it has affirmed the primacy of culture even when it is associated with luxury, splendor, and beauty. (For this theme see also our Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica - Group Tours Rome).

Of all the artists who lived and worked in this area in the heart of Rome, Raphael and Michelangelo are the ones whose inedited aspects and secret passions you will discover. Their lives, too, were often marked by scandal, or rather by loves that were considered scandalous, as for instance when the love was homosexual. This was the case of Michelangelo's attachment to Tommaso de' Cavalieri, which is documented by the passionate letters of the mature master to the handsome young man. Of love, and sometimes death - if the case was as it seems, a love rivalry that made the temperament of a certain inflammable Caravaggio explode, take sword in hand, and kill another dandy in the neighborhood. His crime unfolded where love and death were equally at home: in the corner of piazza Campo dei Fiori where the condemned were burned at the stake - one of the most widely diffused forms of execution with which the Church controlled the city and its territories.

In 1599 there were 48 executions in Rome, in 1600 only 32. Among these was the execution of Giordano Bruno, philosopher and artist, original thinker who left us - in addition to theatrical works - acute and pondered reflections on human nature and the universe. Giordano Bruno had traveled, written, published, and taught in prestigious universities in Europe. He had been a Dominican but then had renounced his vows. He was not an atheist, he had a broader and more critical vision of man and of Christianity, he believed in a society of free men capable of critical thought. His ideas about the infinity of the universe are the basis of modern science. After years of trials and prison he was basely burned alive in this piazza for having refused to retract his ideas. He was burned like a calf at Easter in order to keep vivid the horror that awaited anyone who chose to go against the truth of the church omnipotent.

His was not the only crime officiated by the Tribunal of the Inquisition. In this piazza the heretics, or those the tribunal defined as such, were bound hand and foot, gagged so they could not scream (the official motivation was so that they could not curse), placed alive on a pile of wood and while the crowd looked on stunned, their eyes scanned the empty clouds in the sky, a guard set the fire. A crucifix was placed there so that they might remember Christ's mercy. At length even the memory of Bruno was obliterated and any attempt to celebrate it was strongly opposed. It was only on June 9, 1889 that a city council with a Catholic minority succeeded in besting the resistance of the Roman religious community to finally celebrate the proper memory of this liberated man, erecting a bronze image of him in the center of the piazza.

Bridge of the Angels
Immediately after crossing the piazza where three ancient roads rich with history converge (we will walk the important passages in this tour), we will find ourselves suspended over the river amidst the coming and going of angels. The unusual encounter emits a breath of buoyancy and the mind of the traveler, no less than his heart, is lifted by it. But it wasn't always this impression the pilgrim received while crossing the bridge - the fastest and for a long time the only access to St. Peter's Basilica. For centuries up until 1870 the spectacle was often much more desolate and macabre. In the little piazza nearby there were in fact frequent hangings and decapitations, and the severed heads or the bodies of the hanged were often affixed to the railing of the bridge, horrifying the passersby.

A chronicle from 1500 brings us the news of 18 hanged in the same day and exhibited on the bridge. It was an event less rare than we might believe since the people got to the point of laughing bitterly at the spectacle with the proverb: "Ce so piu' teste mozze su le spallette che meloni al mercato" or "there are more severed heads on the rail than melons in the market." Of a different character but not less terrible was the accident that occurred during the Jubilee year of 1450. An immense crowd had gathered for the veneration of the face of Christ impressed on Veronica's veil and in the mass exit from St. Peter's Basilica, people became trapped in a fury of spooked horses and carriages out of control. Even if the information we have on the dynamics of the event is imprecise, we know that the dead numbered around 200. Not surprisingly little chapels were built in their memory that were later destroyed.

By contrast, tremendous indignation was aroused in 1599 for the final chapter of the story of abuses and injustice suffered by Beatrice Cenci. She was decapitated at age 16, along with her brother who was clubbed, literally beaten to death with a club. Their stepmother was also executed. Huge crowds gathered for their executions, broken-heartedly following the terrible phases of the event, the prayers, the rituals and even the mishaps that prolonged the agony of the beautiful Beatrice and caused dozens of those present to pass out. During the months of imprisonment and the lengthy trial, the Romans had anxiously followed the outcome of Beatrice and her relatives because while the crime of killing her father that she and the others had committed was atrocious, the man in question had repeatedly violated his daughter and abused the entire family, finally even locking them up in a castle outside the city.

The very famous name of the family - the ancient Roman house - the direct involvement of the pope, the political and economic interests at stake all caused the news to echo throughout Europe. Various writers, including Stendhal, published sad accounts of it. For us it will be another way to enter the everyday life of Rome and the social and political dynamics of the time. The angels then, or rather their statues, were not yet added to the arcades of the bridge. Had they been there they certainly would have closed their eyes to shut out the sight, otherwise they would have broken out of the marble to stop the hand of the executioner. Their design - by Bernini - and their realization occurred only around 1668.They too aroused a scandal, the scandal of the moralists who opposed their blatant beauty. Each one of the angels carries one of the symbols of the passion of Christ: the nails, the cross, the lance, the crown of thorns. Whether they carry them to the bridge or away from it remains difficult for the viewer to determine. But this is part of art and the language in which, from first to last, it is rooted.

Castel Sant'Angelo
No other edifice incorporates within its own structure such an imposing memory of its nearly 19 centuries of history, no other site includes such a multitude of metamorphoses, destruction and reconstruction. Here the mourning of death and the extravagance of life are superimposed on one another. Here on the funeral urns of the emperors, the popes of the Renaissance cultivated sensual pleasure. An angel with broad wings spread, just barely closing like an eagle about to perch, mounts guard over the giant castle, visually lightening the mass of stone. The arm holding the sword is posed in a gesture of replacing the weapon in its sheath. It is a sign of the cessation of hostilities. His form is that of a warrior and the statue commemorates the vision Pope Gregory the Great had in 590 as he led a sacred procession that wound through the streets of the city devastated by a terrible plague. The pope and his procession carried a sacred image of the Madonna from the church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli (a site visited at the beginning of our itinerary) to St. Peter's Basilica. As he reached the bridge, Pope Gregory the Great saw an angel alight on the summit of the castle, replacing his sword into its sheath: mercy had been granted, there would be no more dead, and so it was. The plague ended.

As for the dead, if the angel had been the involuntary messenger, certainly he ministered abundantly in that century. The nearly twenty-year Gothic war, between the Byzantines and the Goths for possession of Rome, dragged out until the mid 6th century. It reduced the population to a few thousand inhabitants and it definitively eroded the residual splendor of ancient imperial Rome. Castel Sant'Angelo in particular had become the fulcrum of the war since the Byzantines had barricaded themselves in the castle and the Goths besieged them there. During certain phases of this conflict the besieged Byzantines, short on ammunition, ended up taking statues and decorations from the building to hurl down on the Goths, definitively despoiling the mausoleum of its original form and meaning as a monument designed to hold the ashes of the emperor Hadrian (built in139 AD).

Between the 9th and 13th centuries the structure, by then converted into a real castle with the addition of walls and fortifications, assumed an increasingly central role in the interminable power conflicts that broke out between the leading families of the time as the church slowly established itself as the temporal power, with a kingdom and a pope king. It was in this period that one of the most intriguing and violent stories of the tumultuous Roman Middle Ages took place. It is a story of marriage and blood centered on the figure of Marozia who, as the lover of one pope and mother of the successive one, ended up imprisoned in the subterranean chambers of the castle where she was killed by one of her sons shortly after she had celebrated her marriage.

But it was Pope Nicholas III of the Orsini, one of the ruling families of the time, who bound the role of the building to the destiny of the popes. At the end of the 14th century he transferred some of the administrative functions of the papacy here from St. John at the Lateran, which was by then no longer secure, and he initiated the construction of the famous "passetto," the fortified corridor suspended on high walls designed to allow the popes a fast escape from the Vatican palaces to the castle. The splendor of the castle, however, is the product of the Renaissance, thanks not only to the undeniable heights of culture and art that were reached at that time, but also the systematic exploitation of gold and natural and human resources from the new world that were brought to the old world with the blessing of the popes.

The first papal residence built here, constructed in the middle of the 14th century by Pope Nicholas V, was transformed by the infamous Pope Alexander VI Borgia into a true royal palace with frescoed halls. He also fortified and completed the external ring of walls and bastions just in time: he managed to save himself from the assault by the troops of Charles VIII in 1494 thanks to the passetto and the oil and grain reserves stored in the underground chambers. The stored oil in 83 containers served not only to dress the delicacies of the papal kitchen but it was also thrown boiling onto the attacking enemies. The successive popes, Julius II, Leo X, and Clement VII, were no less involved in the addition of magnificent loggias with spectacular views of the city and finely decorated halls, in which prayer was given much less space than feasting, carousing, and the councils of war with which the Renaissance popes consolidated the borders of the papal territories. With regard to the decorations, the "stufetta" of Clement VII is particularly famous. It is a kind of small thermal space, in vogue among the elite of the time. Its central bathroom has provoking representations of classical myths. Paul III Farnese outdid the others, raising another apartment above the pre-existing rooms. It is lavish with unlimited luxury, richness, and art. Of his rooms, the hall of Cupid and Psyche with depictions by the painter Pierin del Vaga is one of our particular favorites on the itinterary. It represents one of the most beautiful of the Greek myths: Cupid and Psyche, or the invention of the kiss and the exaltation of love as a wonder of the senses and the soul, the Greek version of Disneyland's Beauty and the Beast.

But through the centuries the castle did not grow only in height and splendor. As its summits reached toward the heavens in luxurious paradises, its subterranean chambers expanded in horror and in increasing numbers of prison cells, cells unbelievably constricted, gained by using even the air shafts of the ancient mausoleum. In these cages the destinies of artists, delinquents, prelates suspected of conspiracy, and political adversaries of the popes crossed here - men and women who were perhaps guilty or perhaps innocent but for whom justice would never be rendered.

The stories of Benevenuto Cellini and Beatrice Cenci are those that will make our hearts beat most and show us best the city in motion, they will catapult us into the Sack of Rome by the German mercenary troops of the Emperor Charles V in 1527 that had infinite consequences for the future of Rome and young Beatrice's injustice. Lifting their eyes to peer through a small grate in the prison and look up toward the upper rooms of the castle that would have seemed like tall towers from there, Benvenuto Cellini, Beatrice Cenci, and the other unfortunate prisoners of the castle of the angel would have seen the large window of the Hall of Justice, from which they would have heard their death sentences.

Who knows what they would have seen in that fatal instant in the gesture of the angel, who knows what they would have read in that sword raised over the void. By the light of past events, it no longer seems certain that he will replace his sword, given that so many times he was constrained to draw it and stain it with blood.

With the most beautiful view of Rome that the 360 degrees of luxurious loggias offer of the whole city, immersed in the light of the sunset, our journey will conclude. But at this point across the undulating horizons of rooftops and hills, domes, trees, and the river, you will easily make out the destinies of love and death of the men and women of Rome in the company of the angels who sometimes come to soothe the enigma.