Browse Items (122 total)
Papal Patronage of San Cosimato
In the middle of the 15th century, each of the Roman Franciscan convents (San Cosimato, San Lorenzo in Panisperna, and San Silvestro in Capite) were reformed and re-staffed with nuns from Observant Clarissan convents in Perugia. They also expanded…
Saint Francis and the Church of San Francesco a Ripa
The Church of San Francesco a Ripa (or Ripa Grande) represents the oldest and perhaps the most significant Franciscan site in Rome. After Pope Gregory IX handed control of the old San Biagio Hospice over to the Franciscan order, they immediately…
Torre dei Conti: Protecting Papal Processions
The Torre dei Conti still guards the base of the steep Salita del Grillo road, as it has since its construction in the early thirteenth century when it was built by the Conti Pope Innocent III. Some claim that he used church funds to build the tower,…
Torre del Grillo
Due to the lack of documentation of the tower during the Middle Ages, much of its history is less clear than some of the more famous towers in the area. Some sources attribute its construction to Gilidone Carbone, a member of the Colonna family who…
Sant’Angelo in Pescheria
“Then he predicted his ascendancy and his reform of the government of the city in this way: on the wall of Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, a place famous throughout the world, he had a picture painted.” The Life of Cola di Rienzo I.IV, pp. 37. Pope Stephen…
Cola on the Capitoline
Now Cola de Rienzi, though still somewhat fearful, gathered his courage and set out, together with the Pope’s vicar, and climbed to the Palace of the Campidoglio in the year of our Lord thirteen forty-six. He had a force of about one hundred armed…
Introduction to the Disabitato
An understanding of medieval Rome is incomplete without a grasp of the massive population drain that followed the collapse of the Empire in the fifth century. At its height in the third century, Rome was home to around 1,000,000 people, yet this…
Clivo di Scauri
Winding their way along the southern slopes of the Caelian Hill, the Clivo di Scauri and the Via San Stefano Rotondo follow the same route as the Clivus Scauri, a medieval (and ancient) road that connected the Palatine Hill to the neighborhood of the…
Agriculture and Reuse in the Roman Forum
Splitting Rome into the disabitato and the abitato makes it seem as if there is a heavy divide between the inhabited and uninhabited parts of the city. The Mantua canvas, for example, clearly shows the distinction between the green-belt of the…
Development of the Disabitato
Within the disabitato, antique temples, baths, villas, and shops took on new uses as the environment around them changed. At the beginning of our tour, in Parco degli Caffarella, the changes to these structures have been preserved into the present.…
The Salito del Grillo/Via de’ Conti: Fortifying the Arteries of the Disabitato
This rather small road, running adjacent to the Via dei Fori Imperiali linking the Capitoline and the Colosseum, is a must-see for those interested in the barons’ skirmishes that broke out periodically throughout Rome’s late medieval history. Three…
The Vatican
Following the coronation procession route of Pope Innocent III at the end of the 12th century, the Vatican would have been the start. Papal coronations represented the pope’s authority and power over secular rule, and there is no better place to…
San Clemente
The coronation procession followed a pattern. It began in the Vatican for the consecration and then crossed the river to go into the city, the archeological zone, and then the churches. Among others, Pope Innocent III’s coronation procession route…
Medieval Processions: An Introduction
Religious processions were common occurrences in medieval Rome. Romans took to the streets to celebrate religious holidays, feast days, baptisms, and funerals almost weekly. The largest and grandest of the processions occurred more rarely: the…
The Forum
Before the medieval period, the Forum was a popular stop on processions of all kinds, especially funerals. Emperors and popes would be paraded through the arches before reaching their final resting places. While heavily associated with a romanticized…
The Campidoglio
The Campidoglio served multiple functions during its time as a processional landmark in medieval Rome. While it was the center of the medieval Roman government, the square and area around the Capitoline hill also held one of the city’s major markets,…
Castel Sant'Angelo
The Castel Sant’Angelo was an important political landmark in medieval Rome. Whoever controlled it controlled the city. For example, in the 10th century, the powerful Crescentii family used it as a garrison, which allowed them to seize and imprison…
Jews at the Orsini Fortress
The position of Jews in 12th century Rome was complex, and nowhere was this more apparent than in processions. Their role was to present the pope with a set of laws for his ratification at what was known as the Arpacata, an Orsini family fortress,…
The Via Papalis
The road most of the processions followed was known as the via Papalis, or the road of the Pope. This was the main road that connected the Vatican, the papal residence and home of St. Peter’s Basilica, to the Lateran Basilica, the official cathedral…
Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano
The Lateran Basilica is the Cathedral of Rome and mother church of the world, as well as the final procession stop. It is located on land once owned by the emperor Constantine. In 311, he transferred the land to the current pope for a church. The…
The Dioscuri
According to Benedict, the supposed author of Mirabilia Urbis Romae, the statues are of two young men named Praxiteles and Phidias during the time of Emperor Tiberius. The Emperor respected their wisdom and kept them in his palace. One day Emperor…
Marvels of Rome: Colosseum
Benedict’s Colosseum is not the site of gory battles, martyred Christians, or blood games played for the amusement of the Roman people and the glorification of the fighters. Instead, he speaks of a grand temple to the Sun, “of marvelous beauty and…
The Pantheon
The legend of the Pantheon begins with a Prefect named Agrippa. He was returning to Rome after subjugating the Suevians, Saxons, and other western nations when the bell signalling rebellion in Persia started to ring. In this time at the Temple of…
Portico in Piazza di Trevi
The portico in Piazza di Trevi provides an example of a colonnaded portico. Such porticoes were typical of more lavish styles of housing in medieval Rome. In these porticoes, the columns and architraves are almost always spoils--ancient . As these…
Case in Via della Lungaretta
The Casa in Via della Lungaretta, a medieval Roman house made of brick and other classical remnants, follows an ancient Roman vernacular style with its open front and a space for shops beneath it. In a Medieval city it would be typical for houses to…