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CASTEL SANT' ANGELO: THE TOMB OF THE EMPEROR HADRIAN NEAR THE VATICAN CITY |
The huge circular round of masonry that stands near the west bank of the Tiber river not far from the road leading up to the front of saint Peter's has had many names during its nearly 1,900 years of existence. Although it began as a tomb, it became a fortress, a prison, and then a papal apartment complex. The most recent transformation turned into a museum. It has been the site of murders and battles, theatrical productions and opera acts, fireworks and firing squads.
The original purpose of castel sant' Angelo was a tomb of the emperor Hadrian and his family. Work probably began in the 120 AD about the same time of the Pantheon . To imagine both gigantic structures underway at the same time for the same patron gives some idea of the resources at disposal of a roman emperor. Progress on the tomb was slow. Hadrian died in 138 AD, but his mausoluem was not completed until the following year, during the reign of his successor, Antoninus Pius.
In Rome the family tomb of the emperor Augustus stood near the right bank of the Tiber river: like Hadrian's tomb the mausoleum of Augustus was a round structure originally faced with marble, crowned with a mound of earth planted with cypress trees and topped with a bronze statue of Augustus.
The spot Hadrian picked out was on the opposite side of the Tiber, however on the edge of a desolate area called the ager vaticanus, the Vatican fields. A few hundred yards to the west was the circus of Nero, originally a race course of that emperor but used also for the public execution of Christians. Nearby were some scattered and poor burial sites including that one of the Jewish fisherman whose faith that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah had brought him from Galilee to Rome and who had died about 65 AD, crucified upside down in Nero's circus. Although Hadrian of course was unaware that he was building his family mausoleum a few hundred yards from the grave of saint Peter, this coincidence would eventually link Hadrian 's tomb with the papacy and determine much of the monument's future history.
Unlike the Pantheon, castel sant' Angelo was never consecrated. As a result so many changes have been made over the centuries that no one is sure of its original appearance. What remains of Hadrian's structure is a 300 foot sqaure concrete base surrounding a massive cylinder made of travertine stone. Whatever was above the cylinder has disappeared, but archaeologists think it may have looked like a much larger version of the mausoluem of Augustus. Hadrian's attempt to assure his immortality trough this monument ultimately was a failure because the building's function as a memorial to this emperor who came from Spain lasted little more than a hundred years. About 271 AD the emperor Aurelian ordered the construction of defensive walls around Rome and in his haste to get them in place he ordered his masons to incorporate anything in the walls' path that might serve the city's defense.
Aurelian city walls of Rome proved unequal to the task of keeping the barbarians at bay, and Hadrian's tomb was soon pressed into service as a defensive fortress.