Piazza del Campidoglio - the central area of the Capitoline Hill is the work of genius Michelangelo Buonarroti. Both the geometric figures in the square and the exterior of the facades of the surrounding buildings were designed by the great Renaissance artist. Michelangelo also designed the magnificent Cordonata staircase that leads to the square. At the height of his fame, the great architect was hired by Pope Paul Farnese III, who wanted the symbol of the new Rome to impress Charles V, who was expected in 1538. This gave him the opportunity to build a monumental civil square for a large city, as well as restore the greatness of Rome. The first projects of Michelangelo for the area and remodeling of the surrounding palaces date back to 1536. His plan was extremely extensive. He emphasized the appeal of the classical orientation of Capitoline Hill in a symbolic gesture that turned the Roman community center away from the Roman Forum in the direction of papal Rome and the Christian church in the form of St. Peter’s Basilica. This half-circle turn can also be seen as Michelangelo’s desire to turn to a new, developing part of the city, and not to the ancient ruins of the past. Although the overall design was completed in the middle of the XVI century by order of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The actual completion of Piazza del Campidogli dates from the 17th century. The statue of the rider, which stands in the middle of the square, is a statue of Marcus Aurelius of the II century. This is a copy of the actual statue, which is located in the Palazzo Nuovo.
Pre-existing
Since the Middle Ages, the Campidoglio area was the
seat of the civil administration of the city.
On the remains of
the Tabularium stood a fortress of the Corsi family, which the Roman
people seized in 1114; it was destined to the seat of the city senate
and enlarged in the 14th century. The unpaved open space in front, which
housed the people's meetings, was flanked by buildings destined to be
the seat of the Banderesi, that is, the captains of the city militia.
Bernardo Rossellino
In 1453, Pope Nicholas V had the Palazzo dei
Conservatori built at Rossellino, heavily restructuring the Banderesi
houses to create the seat of the new judiciary. Rossellino created a
building with a round arched portico on the ground floor and a facade
with crusader windows and coupled loggias; the orientation of the
pre-existing buildings was preserved, following clearly perspective
intentions, according to a design principle identical to that which
Rossellino implemented later in Pienza, creating a trapezoidal square.
The renovation works also involved the Palazzo Senatorio, but were
interrupted by the death of the pope.
The Palazzo dei
Conservatori was almost completely demolished in 1540 by Michelangelo,
but the fifteenth-century arrangement is documented in the drawings by
Maarten van Heemskerck executed between 1536 and 1538.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
In 1534-38 Michelangelo Buonarroti completely
redesigned the square, drawing it in all its details and turning it no
longer towards the Roman Forum but towards St. Peter's Basilica, which
represented the new political center of the city.
It is said that
the rearrangement of the square was commissioned by the then Pope Paul
III, who was ashamed of the state of the famous hill (since the Middle
Ages the place was in such a state of neglect that it was also called
"Colle Caprino ", as it was used for grazing goats) after the triumphal
route organized in Rome in honor of Charles V in 1536.
Michelangelo preserved the oblique orientation of the pre-existing
buildings, obtaining an open space with a slightly trapezoidal plan (the
Palazzo Senatorio and that of the Conservatories form an angle of 80 °),
on which he aligned the new facades, in order to expand the perspective
towards the visual focus. consisting of the Palazzo Senatorio. For this
purpose, he had the idea of building a new palace - called for this
Palazzo Nuovo - to close the perspective towards the basilica of Santa
Maria in Aracoeli and to pave the square thus obtained by eliminating
the existing dirt road.
He redesigned the Palazzo dei
Conservatori, removing all the previous structures and harmonizing it
with the Palazzo Senatorio. To the latter he added a double staircase
which was used to access the new entrance, no longer facing the forum
but towards the square; he also modified the façade, in order to make it
uniform with that of the Palazzo dei Conservatori and that of the
Palazzo Nuovo facing the church of S. Maria dell'Aracoeli, inserting
giant pilasters (which appeared for the first time in public buildings),
a cornice with a balustrade (another novelty element) and a tower.
At the Palazzo dei Conservatori he added a porticoed facade and here
too he inserted giant pilasters (which punctuates it in a rhythmic and
regular way) and a balustrade cornice with statues.
Buonarroti
also designed the staircase of the Cordonata and the balustrade which
overlooks the underlying Piazza d'Aracoeli.
The equestrian statue
of Marcus Aurelius in gilded bronze, previously located in Piazza San
Giovanni (where the obelisk is now located), was placed in the center of
the square by Michelangelo himself, to whom Paul III had commissioned to
study its precise location; the original statue, after a long
restoration that has also brought to light traces of gilding, is now
preserved in the Capitoline Museums, while a copy of it has been placed
on the square.
The works went so slowly that Michelangelo (who
died in 1564) could only see the completion of the double staircase that
served as a new access to the Palazzo Senatorio, with the positioning of
the two statues depicting the "Nile" and the "Tiber". The facade and the
top of the tower were still incomplete, while the Palazzo Nuovo had not
even been started.
Giacomo Della Porta
However, the works were completed according to
the guidelines of the original Michelangelo project.
Giacomo
Della Porta took care of it in particular, to whom we owe the
reconstruction of the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the completion of the
facade of the Palazzo Senatorio, including the placement, in the central
niche, of a statue of Athena taken from the Palazzo dei Conservatori,
which however in the 1593 it was replaced with another much smaller
statue of Athena (so much so that it had to be placed on three pedestals
to adapt it to the size of the niche), in red porphyry and white marble,
reconverted as an allegory of the goddess Rome.
When, at the end
of 1587, the branch of the new "Acqua Felice" aqueduct reached the
Capitol, Pope Sixtus V launched a public competition (deliberately
excluding Della Porta, as proof of the difficult relations existing
between the two) for the construction of a fountain on the square. The
project by Matteo Bartolani was the winner: it was a grandiose project,
which however was only partially realized with the construction of two
basins, one inside the other, leaning against the center of the facade
of the Palazzo Senatorio, between the statues of the two rivers. and
under the niche containing Athena, rectangular in shape with the longest
side lobed.
But Della Porta was thinking of a different
arrangement of the square. At that time he was also working on the
fountain in Piazza San Marco, which featured, as a background, the
imposing statue of Marforio; a few days after its placement, however,
the statue was brought back to the top of the Capitol, where it came
from. It is possible that Della Porta, with a sudden rethinking, wanted
to propose to the Pope an alternative to Bartolani's project, which
distorted the original Michelangelo's design: he thought of using
Marforio as a background for an imposing fountain, which would have
closed the left side of the square, the one towards the Basilica of
Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, in place of the Palazzo Nuovo. The Pope did
not want to know, confirmed Bartolani's project and Marforio remained
parked on the square.
The only two fountains that, in 1588, Della
Porta managed to build for the Capitol are the two basalt lions on the
sides of the base of the cordonata, transferred in 1582 from the remains
of the "Temple of Isis", completed with two specially constructed marble
vases. to collect water. The two original lions, transferred to the
Vatican Museums in 1885, were then replaced in their place in 1955.
Only in 1594, with Pope Clement VIII, Giacomo Della Porta was able
to create "his" fountain of Marforio (among other things, his last
work): the entire sculptural group was placed in a basin equal to those
used at the base of the Palazzo Senatorio, in front of an imposing
façade. The structure, however, was dismantled about fifty years later,
when work began on the construction of the Palazzo Nuovo, and then
rebuilt in 1734 in the courtyard of the palace, where it is currently
located, but without the front elevation.
Concluding
interventions
The square was finished in the seventeenth century,
although the pavement was made by Antonio Muñoz only in 1940, according
to the original Michelangelo project deduced from a print by Étienne
Dupérac.
The Cordonata is adorned with various sculptural works.
In addition to the statues of the two lions placed at the base, towards
the middle of the climb, on the grassy clearing between the Cordonata
itself and the Aracoeli staircase, there is the statue of Cola di
Rienzo; at the top are the statues of the dioscuri Castor and Pollux,
coming from a temple of the Dioscuri in the Circo Flaminio, two trophies
of marble weapons from the nymphaeum of Alessandro in Piazza Vittorio,
called Trofei di Mario, and the original milestone column of the first
mile of the Via Appia.
The Palazzo Senatorio is now the seat of
the Municipality of Rome, while the Capitoline Museums, opened in 1734
(it is the oldest public museum in the world) are housed in the other
two buildings, also joined by an underground gallery, the Lapidary
Gallery.