The Castel Sant’Angelo originates from 136 when Emperor Hadrian has decided to build the mausoleum for themselves and for his inheritors. This mausoleum would be the greatest building in the Rome and had to surpass the famous Altar of Augustan Peace.
Hadrian started the realization of his plans when he come back to the Rome after a long trip over the Roman Empire. But he not finished the construction and the mausoleum has been built by his successor.
The mausoleum had a shapes of the round tower topped with Hadrian’s statue on the roof. This statue had enormous sizes. On this statue Hadrian drove the chariot with four horses. As one ancient author wrote the man could crept through the eyes of these horses. Today only the head of Hadrian has been preserved from the statue which you can see now at the Vatican’s museum.
A few Romans Emperors were buried at the Mausoleum. Among them such names as Commodus or Marcus Aurelius. The last one was the Septimius Severus and after him the Mausoleum was closed for a few centuries.
The Mausoleum was untouched till the 400 year when Emperor Honorius decided to include it into the defensive system of Rome and turned Mausoleum to the fortress.
In 410, when Rome was attacked by the Visigoths, Roman soldiers used decorative elements of Mausoleum as missiles. They broke the statues and threw its pieces to the enemies. But these deeds were incomplete to save the Rome. The Visigoths got the city and sacked it during the three days. Of course they got all valuable things from the Mausoleum of Hadrian.
In the Middle Ages the Mausoleum continued used as the fortress. It was turbulent times and Popes often found refuge there. They even built the special passage between their residence in the Vatican and the fortress. And this passage was so wide so they even could use the wagon to reach the refuge.
In the 1379, during the internal insurgency in Rome, the fortress was occupied by the army of the Robert of Geneva who tried to escape here from the people's rampage. After the long resistance from the Robert’s side, rebels took the fortress and partly demolished it. The slabs which covered the fortress’s surface were took out and then used to pave the streets of the Rome.
I think it’s time to mention how the Mausoleum of Hadrian got its modern name – the Castel Sant’Angelo. It happened in the end of the 6-th century when the plague raged in Rome. The Pope Gregory the Great organized procession over the city and plead the God to stop the epidemic. When procession walked past the castle the Pope heard how the angels sang. He treated it as a good sign, and really, the plague retreated from the city.
Since the castle become known as the Castel Sant’Angelo. Popes Nicholas V and Alexander VI applied a lot of their effort and energy to fortify castle in the 15 century. For example, Alexander VI built additional towers around the castle and the front yard. Also in the castle were built the treasury, Pope’s rooms, depots for food and water and a lot of the supplementary buildings.
The Castel Sant’Angelo has also the dismal fame. It was the Pope’s jail and sometimes the prisoners were executed just inside of the castle. In those days the sad ringtone of the bells could be heard in the Rome. The most famous prisoners of the castle are Galileo Galilei, Benvenuto Cellini and Count Cagliostro.
Today the Castel Sant’Angelo is a museum were you can see a lot of the showpieces dedicated to the medieval Rome. Also in the museum there is a nice collection of the arts.
