18J0] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



155 



The history of this monument does, in fact, become a history of 

 Rome itself; and, perhaps, before I proceed to speak of it under the 

 modern ajjpelhition of Forte St. Angelo, you may be interested in 

 hearing the vicissitudes throupjh which it has passed. From the 

 time that it was joined to the city walls, a.d. 423, it may be con- 

 sidered no longer as a tomb but as a fortress; and, after being fre- 

 quently taken by the Goths, and retaken by the soldiers of Jus- 

 tinius it was left in the hands of Narses the Eunuch, in 552, and 

 afterwards transmitted to the Exarchs, who succeeded to power in 

 Italy under the Greek emperors. 



In the year 908 this citadel, for so I may now call it, is found in 

 the possession of Albert surnamed the Rich, one of the Counts of 

 Etruria. This priuce was admitted to a share of the fortress, by a 

 Roman lady, Tlieodora, more illustrious for her extraction and 

 power than for her chastity. Her daughter Marozia, more beauti- 

 ful than her mother, but not more modest, kept the citadel as a 

 place of security for her guilt, and at length she celebrated her 

 nuptials in it with Hugo, called King of Italy, and she gave him 

 up the whole for a dowry. It passed through several members of 

 this family, in succession, until it reached Pope John XII., and 

 then it was for the first time possessed by the Bishops of Rome, 

 A.I). 956. They were masters of it for about twenty-seven years, 

 until it was seized by Crescentius, upon the pretext of defending 

 his consulship. He made entrenchments aud outworks to it, in 

 order to defend himself against the Emperor Otho III., who came 

 to espouse the cause of the pope; and after a protracted quarrel of 

 eleven years, it was finally recovered for Gregory V. It continued 

 for a long time after to be called the Tower or Castrum of Cre- 

 scentius. 



During the succeeding ages, and in the time of the troubles 

 which drove the popes to Avignon, and comprising the career of 

 Rienzi, last of tlie Romans, the fortress held a conspicuous place in 

 history. But, on the return of the popes to Rome, 1376, it fell 

 into the hands of the French cardinals. Through those dark ages 

 it was suffered to fall into decay, until Boniface IX. renewed the 

 fortifications, after the designs of Nicollo de Pietro Aretino. 

 After this it was taken by Ladislaus, king of Naples, but was 

 again restored to Pope Martin V., 1431. But the first important 

 additions of modern times were made by the famous or infamous 

 Borgia Alexander VI; he raised the round tower higher, and 

 erected a bulwark of travertine stone between it and the bridge, 

 almost as we see it in the present day. He also constructed the 

 covered gallery, which communicates with the Vatican, about 

 3,000 feet in length. The arches under the gallery were made 

 by Pius IV., and it was roofed by Urban VIII. Borgia just fin- 

 ished his work in time for his own personal security. On new 

 year's day, H95, the king of France (Charles VIII.) with his 

 army, entered Rome by the Porta del Popolo, while Ferdinand 

 king of Naples left it by the Porta St. Sebastiano. The pope, 

 says Guiceiardini, ^^pieno d' incredible timnrc e ansieta" took refuge 

 in the Forte St. Angelo, accompanied by Cardinals Orsini aud 

 Caraffa. Alexander VI. refused to give up the forte to the 

 French, in 1495, but the Pope Borgia sent four cardinals to treat 

 with the French monarch, and succeeded in effecting a brotherly 

 alliance. The pope of 1 848 sent three cardinals to treat with a 

 French general, and as it appears with equal success, for the Forte 

 St. Angelo remains in the hands of the pope. The similarity which 

 exists between those transactions, separated by a space of four 

 centuries and a half, is most striking. : 



Pius IV. was the next pope wliose works are worthy of noticet 

 they were not confined to the fortress, but he enclosed the whole o 

 the Vatican and brought his walls down to the Tiber, at the Porta 

 St. Spirito, enclosing the old walls of the Leonine city. Finally, 

 Urban VIII., 1644, completed the walls on the Trastevere, as we 

 now see them, by drawing the line from the walls of Pius IV., 

 and along the top of the Janiculum, and bringing them down to 

 the river at the Porta Portese. The gate of St. Pancrazio and the 

 bastions on each side, rendered so celebrated by the siege of 1849, 

 were all the work of Pope Barberini Urban VIII., and as if antici- 

 pating a visit from the old friends of Italy, he appears to have 

 made them much stronger than General Oudinot expected. It was 

 tins papal engineer who stripped the Pantheon of its bronze to melt 

 down into cannons for defending the improved fortress of St. 

 Angelo. I have purposely omitted all allusion to the assault of 

 Rome by the Connetable Bourbon, and the bombardment of the 

 Forte St. Angelo, with all the adventures of Benvenuto Cellini in 

 1527, and when Clement VII. (Medici) took refuge in the fortress. 



But having seen this fortress become the occasional residence of 

 popes and cardinals since the revival of the arts, we shall naturally 

 conclude that those dignified persons, who have no antipathy to 



luxury out of Lent, would not be lodged in rude sepulchral cham- 

 bers iior shut themselves up within walls of peperine stone or 

 naked brickwork. It will be some refreshment to your eyes, after 

 I have so long wearied your ear, to turn from the heavy walls of a 

 fortification to the decorations of the habitable rooms within, as 

 drawn by the able pencil of M. Griiner. In a saloon in front, 

 which communicates with the balcony facing the bridge, you have 

 some pictures of Pierino Buonaccorsi, called Del Paga, a scholar of 

 Raffaelle; and in the balcony opposite are to be seen some of the 

 designs of Girolamo Siccendanto da Serraoneta. But these are 

 nothing compared witli the beautiful arabescpies which adorn the 

 ceilings of some of the other rooms. I shall not attempt any 

 description of those, because we are favoured this evening with 

 the loan of those exquisite drawings to which I have already 

 alluded. You will remark, as they are passed round the table, the 

 ceiling from which Cardinal Caraffa was, I will not say hung, but 

 suspended; the hook, I believe, still remains in the rosette as a 

 memorial of the deed. 



It does not appear in examining the specimen presented to us 

 this evening, that the popes were partial to sacred subjects, or that 

 they thought to reform their state prisoners by representations of 

 heavenly things. Nymphs, Satyrs, Venuses, and Cupids go round 

 together in the mystic dance, and if Christian theology was sup- 

 posed to have its place at the St. Peter's end of the Borgia cor- 

 ridor, heathen mythology might be very properly imprisoned in 

 the fortress at Rome. I'leave you to exercise your own skill upon 

 the mytholog)', which is couched under griffins bestrode by 

 Cupids, and I\iars admitted into the dressing room of Venus. 

 But I particularly propose to your admiration the paintings in a 

 corridor of the Forte St. Angelo, that is in the modern part, by 

 Giulio Romano, as they are rendered by the masterly hand of iM. 

 Griiner. 



This state prison has always been guarded with great jealousy, 

 and few have ever been known to tell its secrets. Even the artist 

 whose object is known, is admitted with caution; and the anti- 

 quary, when he attempts .to span and measure, is considered an 

 engineer in disguise. This rigour has been still greater since the 

 recent revohition, and the entree has been next to impossible. "The 

 persevering friends of Dr. Achilli, however, did obtain admission, 

 but they do not appear to have seen either Nymphs or Cupids. 

 This is a description which MM. Meymeer and Tonnagive of their 

 visit to the interior of the forte on Sunday, 25th November, 1819: 

 '■'•We first crossed a drawbridge, spanning the first or outer ditcli, 

 v/hich encircles the bastioned enciente. We walked quite round 

 this; on each of the four bastions a gun is mounted, bearing the 

 pontifical arms: from the height of this wall (which commands to 

 the south and west a view of Rome, and of the Trastevere, and 

 to the north and east the Campagna), we looked with much in- 

 terest on the prisoners, all dressed in military clothing, who were 

 walking in the deep and damp ditch, which separates the enciente 

 from the immense tower. The base of this latter is of ancient 

 construction. AVe then crossed another drawbridge which spans 

 this (the second) ditch, and we found ourselves at the entrance of a 

 staircase or sloping path, which crosses in a straight line the whole 

 width of the tower. It was dimly lighted and intersected in four 

 places as we ascended, by traps and drawbridges, each of which 

 would afford successive positions of defence against a party forcing 

 its way from without. On reaching the top we turned to the left, 

 and arrived at an iron gate guarded by French soldiers. They, 

 seeing the unconcerned manner in which we walked up, concluded 

 that we had a pass, unlocked the gate, and admitted us to a plat- 

 form or court, locking the gate and removing the key after we had 

 passed. Above this court, again, rise the upper buildings of the 

 castle, in which the more important political prisoners are kept, 

 and amongst them our friend. Further than tliis we could not 

 go. Again the ponderous grating was unlocked, and we retraced 

 our steps down the long and gloomy staircase, and finding that the 

 commandant had not arrived, we left the fortress with a depres- 

 sion of spirit which we could not shake off for the rest of the day. 

 In many parts of the castle we saw inscribed on the walls the 

 name of Alexander VI., the infamous Borgia, and particularly an 

 immense inscription over the gateway of the tower' — 



'* Alexaniler VI., Pont. Max. Restoravit, Anno. Sal. 1405." 



Such is the most recent intelligence I can give you of the pre- 

 sent internal aspect of this remarkable monument, but the prisoner 

 alluded to in the above description having recently escaped, is at 

 this time in London. I should be afraid to trust myself with a 

 beginning of reflections >ipon the subject I have now finished, for 

 I should be sure in that case to end with a sermon. I will only 

 remark, that however our curiosity may be excited by the stu- 



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