t Interior of Santo Spirito in Sassia
This gate is situated at what was once the southern limit of the “Leonine City”, the area enclosed within walls by Pope Leo IV as a defence against the Saracens, who had sacked Rome in AD 845. The walls measure 3 km (2 miles) in circumference. Work on the walls started in AD 846. Pope Leo supervised the huge army of labourers personally, and the job was completed in four years. He then consecrated his massive feat of construction.
Since the time of Pope Leo the walls have needed much reinforcement and repair. The gateway visible today at Porta Santo Spirito was built by the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in 1543–4. It is framed by two huge bastions that were added in 1564 by Pope Pius IV Medici. Sadly, Sangallo’s design for a monu-mental entrance to the Vatican was never completed; the principal columns come to an end somewhat abruptly in a modern covering of cement.
t Interior of Santo Spirito in Sassia
Built on the site of a church erected by King Ine of Wessex, who died in Rome in the 8th century, this church is the work of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. It was rebuilt (1538–44) after the Sack of Rome left it in ruins in 1527. The façade was added under Pope Sixtus V (1585–90). The pretty bell tower is earlier, dating from the reign of Sixtus IV (1471–84).
The oldest hospital in Rome, this is reputed to have been founded as a result of a nightmare experienced by Pope Innocent III (1198–1216). In the dream, an angel showed him the bodies of Rome’s unwanted babies dredged up from the River Tiber in fishing nets. As a result, the pope hastened to build a hospice for sick paupers. In 1475 the hospital was reorganized by Pope Sixtus IV to care for the poor pilgrims expected for the Holy Year. Sixtus’s hospital was a radical building. Cloisters divided the different types of patients; one area is still reserved for orphans and their nurses.
In order to guarantee anonymity, unwanted infants were passed through a revolv- ing barrel-like contraption called the rota, still visible to the left of the central entrance in Borgo Santo Spirito. Martin Luther, who visited in 1511, was shocked by the number of abandoned children he saw, believing them to be “the sons of the pope himself”.
In the centre, under the hospital’s conspicuous drum, is an octagonal chapel, where Mass was said for patients. This room can be visited by prior arrangment, while the rest of the building still functions as a hospital.
As director of the Hospital of Santo Spirito, the Commendatore not only oversaw the running of the hospital, he was also responsible for its estates and revenues. This important post was originally given to members of the pope’s family.
The palazzo, built next door to the hospital, has a spacious 16th-century frescoed loggia appropriate to the dignity and sobriety of its owners. The frescoes represent the story of the founding of the Hospital of Santo Spirito. To the left of the entrance is the Spezieria, or Pharmacy. This still has the wheel used for grinding the bark of the cinchona tree to produce the drug quinine, first introduced here in 1632 by Jesuits from Peru as a cure for malaria.
Above the courtyard is a splendid clock (1827). The dial is divided into six; it was not until 1846 that the familiar division of the day into two periods of 12 hours was introduced in Rome by Pope Pius IX.
With the building of Via della Conciliazione in the 1930s, Palazzo dei Convertendi was taken down and later moved to this new site nearby. The house, partly attributed to the architect Bramante, is where the artist Raphael died in 1520.
t Detail of a ceiling fresco by Pinturicchio in the Palazzo dei Penitenzieri
The palazzo owes its name to the fact that the place was once home to the confessors (penitenzieri) of St Peter’s. Now partly housing the Hotel Columbus, it was originally built by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere between 1480 and 1490. The palazzo still bears the family’s coat of arms, the oak tree (rovere means “oak”), on its graceful courtyard well-head. On the cardinal’s death, the palazzo was acquired by Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, Pope Julius II della Rovere’s favourite. Suspected of treason, the cardinal was murdered in 1511 by the pope’s nephew, the Duke of Urbino, who took over the palazzo. A few of the rooms of the palazzo still contain beautiful frescoes by Pinturicchio and his workshop. The most notable is Il Soffitto dei Semidei – a magnificent ceiling fresco depicting mythological and allegorical figures and animals.
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The church occupies the site of an ancient Roman pyramid, believed in the Middle Ages to have been the Tomb of Romulus. The pyramid was destroyed by Pope Alexander VI Borgia, but representations of it survive in the bronze doors at the entrance to St Peter’s and in a Giotto triptych housed in the Vatican Pinacoteca.
The present church was begun in 1566 to replace an earlier one which had been in the line of fire of the cannons defending Castel Sant’Angelo during the Sack of Rome in 1527. The papal artillery officers therefore insisted that the dome of the new church should be as low as possible, so it was built without a supporting drum. The first chapel to the right is dedicated to the gunners’ patron saint, Santa Barbara, and is decorated with warlike motifs. In the third chapel on the left are two columns, popularly thought to be the ones which SS Peter and Paul were bound to before going to their martyrdom nearby.
t Street lined with shops and restaurants in the historic Borgo area near the Vatican
The Borgo’s name derives from the German burg, meaning “town”. Rome’s Borgo is where the first pilgrims to St Peter’s were housed in hostels and hospices, often for quite lengthy periods. The first of these foreign colonies, called “schools”, was founded in AD 725 by a Saxon, King Ine of Wessex, who wished to live a life of penance and to be buried near the Tomb of St Peter. These days hotels and hostels have made the Borgo a colony of international pilgrims once again. Much of the area’s character was lost after redevelopment in the 1930s, but it is still enjoyable to stroll the old narrow streets on either side of Via della Conciliazione.
Raphael and Michelangelo count among the Borgo area’s most famous past residents.
The pretty palazzo was built in the late 15th century by the wealthy Cardinal Adriano Castellesi, in a style closely resembling Palazzo della Cancelleria. The cardinal was a much-travelled rogue, who collected vast revenues from the bishopric of Bath and Wells which he was given by his friend King Henry VII of England. In return, he gave Henry his palazzo for use as the seat of the English ambassador to the Holy See. Castellesi was finally stripped of his cardinalate by Pope Leo X Medici and disappeared from history.
Since then the palazzo has had many owners and tenants. In the 17th century it was rented for a time by Queen Christina of Sweden. The Torlonia family, who acquired the building in 1820, owed its fortune to the financial genius of shopkeeper-turned-banker Giovanni Torlonia. He lent money to the impoverished Roman nobility and bought up their property during the Napoleonic Wars.
t The Palazzo di Giustizia, with the Ponte Umberto crossing the Tiber in the foreground
The monumental Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice) was built between 1889 and 1910 to house the national law courts. Its riverside façade is crowned with a bronze chariot and fronted by giant statues of the great men of Italian law.
The building was supposed to embody the new order replacing the injustices of papal rule, but it has never endeared itself to the Romans. It was soon dubbed the Palazzaccio (roughly, “the ugly old palazzo”) both for its appearance and for the nature of its business. By the 1970s the building was collapsing under its own weight, but it has since been restored.
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