Author: Arthur Griffiths

Publisher: Golden Text

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

The Tomb of Hadrian, or Castle of St. Angelo, as it has been called since the famous vision of Gregory the Great, is a familiar object to every stranger in Rome. It stands above the yellow Tiber facing the ancient Aelian Bridge, now called also the Bridge of St. Angelo on the main road to St. Peter’s and the Vatican. It is connected with the latter by a subterranean passage built by Pope Alexander VI in 1500, and used by his successors as a path of retreat to the fortress in times of internal revolt or foreign attack. The great fortress prison, although dismantled of the marble that once covered its stones, is still a most imposing edifice and is second to none in the world in its historic memories, replete with strange and terrible interest. It is an epitome of Roman history, closely associated from the beginning of the Christian era down to the fall of the temporal power of the Popes, with the storms and struggles that have rent the Eternal City. Any account of Italian prisons must thus centre about this grim old relic of the Cæsars,--“this massive mausoleum, by turns a tomb, a fortress, a prison and a palace, a chapel and a treasure-house; now threatening the liberty of Rome, now defending its very existence; now the refuge of the Republic, now the hiding place of the Popes; through war and peace, from the Imperial days on through the Gothic and Mediæval epochs, down to the present hour never ceasing to be a living part of the history of Rome.” Since 1890 it has been used as barracks for a branch of the Italian army, but visitors may yet see the apartments of the Popes and those horrible dungeons into which, in former days, no ray of light could penetrate. Until the French occupation of Rome, when doors were cut into them, they were entered through holes in the vaulted ceiling. Through these the wretched prisoners were let down into the fetid depths of these “sepulchres without the peace of the dead.” In them languished Benvenuto Cellini, the wizard Cagliostro, beautiful, unhappy Beatrice Cenci, and many others famous in song and story.