Capitoline Hill - History

The highest of the seven hills upon which Rome was built. Once the political and religious centre of Ancient Rome, it is now the site of the Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo, and of the city's administrative offices.

Coordinates: 41.890873° N 12.483988° E The Capitoline Hill (Capitolinus Mons), between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the most famous and smallest of the seven hills of Rome.

History

Ancient

It was the site of a temple for the Capitoline Triad, started by Rome's fifth king, Tarquinius Priscus.

At this hill the Sabines, creeping to the Citadel, were let in by the infamous Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius.

When Julius Caesar suffered an accident during his Triumph, clearly indicating the wrath of Jupiter for his actions in the Civil Wars, he approached the hill and Jupiter's temple on his knees as a way of averting the unlucky omen (he was murdered six months later, and Brutus and his other assassins locked themselves inside the temple afterwards)).

The Tabularium, located underground beneath the piazza and hilltop, occupies a building of the same name built in the 1st century BC to hold important Roman records of state.

Medieval

The church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli is adjacent to the square, located adjacent to where the ancient arx or "citadel" atop the hill once stood.

In the Middle Ages the hill’s classical sacred function was largely obscured by its other role as the center of the civic government of Rome, revived as a commune in the 11th century.

Michelangelo

The existing design of the Piazza del Campidoglio (as Romans called it by the 16th century) and the surrounding palazzos was created by famed Renaissance artist and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1536 - 1546.

Michelangelo's first designs for the piazza and remodelling of the surrounding palazzos date from 1536. He effectively reversed the classical orientation of the Capitoline, in a symbolic gesture turning Rome’s civic center to face away from the Roman Forum and instead in the direction of Papal Rome and the Christian church in the form of St. Peter’s Basilica, solving the intractable urbanistic, symbolic, political and propaganda program for the Campidoglio.

The unfolding sequence, Cordonata piazza and the central palazzo are the first urban introduction of the "cult of the axis" that will occupy Italian garden plans and reach fruition in France (Giedion 1962).

However, executing the design was slow work: little was actually completed in Michelangelo's lifetime (the ‘’Cordonata’’ was not in place when Emperor Charles arrived, and the imperial party had to scramble up the slope from the Forum to view the works in progress), but work continued faithfully to his designs and the Campidoglio was completed in the 17th century, except for the paving design, which was to be finished only three centuries later.

Piazza

The bird's-eye view of the engraving by Étienne Dupérac shows Michelangelo's solution to the problems of the space in the Piazza del Campidoglio. Its center springs slightly, so that one senses that one is standing on the exposed segment of a gigantic egg all but buried at the center of the city at the center of the world, as Michelangelo's historian Charles de Tolnay pointed out (Charles De Tolnay, 1930). Benito Mussolini ordered the paving completed to Michelangelo's design — in 1940.)

Marcus Aurelius

In the middle, and not to Michelangelo’s liking, stood the only equestrian bronze to have survived since Antiquity, that of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor.

Palazzi

He provided new fronts to the two official buildings of Rome's civic government, which very approximately faced each other, the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Senatorio, and added one more.

Palazzo dei Conservatori

The Palazzo dei Conservatori was the first use of a giant order that spanned two storeys, here with a range of Corinthian pilasters and subsidiary Ionic columns flanking the ground-floor loggia openings and the second-floor windows.

Palazzo Senatorio

This had been built over the Tabularium that had once housed the archives of ancient Rome.

Palazzo Nuovo

He gave the space a new building at the far end, to close the vista, called Palazzo Nuovo, "new palace," and its facade was thought by Michelangelo as an exact copy to that of Palazzo dei Conservatori.

Balustrade

A balustrade punctuated by sculptures atop the giant pilasters capped the composition, one of the most influential of Michelangelo's designs.

Cordonata

Michelangelo devised a monumental wide ramped stair (the Cordonata) ascending the hill to reach the high piazza, so that the Campidoglio resolutely turned its back on the Roman Forum that it had once commanded.