Upon reaching the top of the stairs of the Capitoline Hill, the viewer will witness Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, which was built during the 16th century. The Campidoglio has a statue of Marcus Aurelius surrounded by three large buildings: from left to right is the Palazzo Nuovo, Palazzo Senatorio, and the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which are now all museums. Despite the political symbol that these buildings represent, only the Palazzo Senatorio was built during the 12th century: the other two buildings were built during the Renaissance period.

The façade of the Palazzo Senatorio that one sees today is from Michelangelo’s plan. The Palazzo’s long history, however, spans centuries before Michelangelo. Built to be the “palace of the commune,” the building represented Rome’s freedom and growing powe. It was also the physical representation of the dreams of the Roman citizens: to rebuild the Capitol, to renew the dignity of the Senate, to reform the order of the knights (Krautheimer 1980, 197-198.) The history of the physical building at first is hazy, but there is evidence that the current structure was not the original building, because there are mentions of distinct new and old Palazzo Senatorio by the 13th century.

By the 15th century, the senate changed to a Senator, which is a position eventually held by Cola di Rienzo. An apparent highly educated man who was the son of an innkeeper and clothing launderer, Cola rose to high power with his ability to unify the people through speech. (Wright 1975, 32.) After his banishment from Rome, he came back as Pope Innocent VI’s appointed Senator. His return did not bode well for him and he soon spiraled downwards quickly. The Palazzo Senatorio was where Cola gave many of his politically persuasive speeches, approved laws, and passed judgments; at the outside entrance of this building is also the place where he was ironically given his own death sentence (Koster 2010, 158-161.)

Holstein, Alizah and Rollo-Koster, Joelle. “Anger and Spectacle in Late Medieval Rome: Gauging Emotion in Urban Topography.” Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space. Ed. Caroline Goodson, Anne E. Lester, Carol Symes. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010.

Krautheimer, Richard. Rome, Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.
Ghisalberti, Alberto Maria, and John Wright. The Life of Cola Di Rienzo. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975.