Castel Saint Angelo Rome
Historical notes
You get to Castel Sant’Angelo going on lungotevere and leaving on the left Place Giovanni XXIII with the entrance of Via della Conciliazione and having in front of you the imposing massive structure of the grandiose " Hadrianeum ", that was wanted and probably conceived by Adriano as a grave for himself and for his successors and perhaps it was realized by the architect Demetriano. The Castle was started by 123 and finished one year after the death of the emperor , by Antonino Pio. It was the burials of the imperial family up to Caracalla who was killed in 217 D.C
Originally the mausoleum was constituted by a square base on which rested a cylindrical construction covered with blocks of tuff and travertine. At the angles of the base, rose statuary groups and also the parastres of the circular body were probably surmounted by statues. In 271 DC after having built the walls in order to defend the city', Aureliano transformed the imperial mausoleum into a strengthened outpost, fencing it with towered boundary walls. The gate that opened in these walls was later named San Pietro’s walls.
Teodorico was the first one who transformed it into a jail, even if the Castle maintained its character of fortitude allowing Totila, to control the city in the hands of Belisario, during the Gothic war. Urban V considering Castel Sant' Angelo as the only guarantee for the control of Rome, left it in the care of a French garrison, but in April 1937 it was reoccupied by the Romans in revolt that tried to raze it to the ground. Bonifacio VIII and the architect Nicolo' Lamberti turned it into an impregnable strong point of the temporal power of Popes, who often resided in the apartment enlarged by Paul III in 6th century . Here the Popes kept their most secret archives and the treasure of the Church. All the complex took its present shape with the restauration works started at the end of 9th century, when the raising of the banks of the river and of the lungotevere broke its connection with the course of water and the bridge.
 As it Appears Today
Today the massive structure has square walls and is strengthened at its angles from the bastions of St. Giovanni on the right and of St. Matteo on the left. At the other sides there are the bastions of St. Luca and St. Mark, along the curtain between the bastions of St. Giovanni and St. Luca has been reconstructed the entrance door of the Castle that, made in 1556 by Giovanni Sallustio Peruzzi for Paul IV, was moved by Urbano VIII in 1628 on the external body of guard that was demolished (1892) because of opening of the lungotevere. The Roman cylindrical body ends with the amazing hanging in cooked bicks completed under the reign of Alexander VI and made of little towers, surmounted from the square tower that englobes the original circular crown close to which are the Renaissance papal apartments that open toward the Tevere thanks to the marmor Loggia of Giulio II. Upstairs you can see the eighteenth-century rooms reserved to the vice castellano and, on the big terrace, the bronzy statue of the aAchangel Michael that sheathes the sword.
 The inside is The museum run
From the lungotevere when you get to the front door that faces the bridge, you turn on the right and walking along the walls, you arrive at the front door called , Peruzzi’s Front door that is situated on the East side. Overcome the box-office, you meet on the left two of the Roman radial cells in which there are a collection of epigraphs and medieval and modern marbles and three didactic plastics that reproduce the Castle at the times of Alexander Vi and of Urban VII. Continuing in the ambulatory, that was built for the will of Bonifacio IX between the Roman cylinder and the square walls, you return in correspondence of the Entrance Front door on the lungotevere and going down a modern staircase, that is at the original level of the mausoleum you reach the grandiose Dromos ending in a hallway with a great niche where was Adriano’s statue. On the right begins the helical ramp covered only in the 9th century and freed of the filling that had obstructed it from the late Middle Ages, whose walls have an apparatus of refined building technique. The 15,5 m. long ramp goes up with a light inclination, completing a whole perimetric turn of the great cylindrical body and overcoming a gradient of 12 m. At the end of helical ramp, is taken on the left the diametral ramp made in the whole cylindrical massive structure when the helical ramp was buried to allow the access to the central side of the fortitude only through a drawbridge bridge. Going across it, thanks to a bridge built by Joseph Valadier in 1822, you rech the room of the cyneric Urns, traditionally believed the one in which the mortal remains of the emperor Adriano were laid down. Crossing another part of the ramp you reach the Courtyard of Honor, also called the Courtyard of the Angel for the presence of the marmor statue of the Archangel Michael that sheathes the sword. On the left side of the courtyard there is Apollo’s Hall, decorated in 1547 by Perin of the Vague who died shortly after the begin of the works . From this room you can visit the room of the Justice, named in this way for the fresco that represents the Angel of the Justice attributed to Zaga. Through a corridor you arrive in the courtyard of the Well on the right, so called for the beautiful puteale in Marble of Alexander VI. The courtyard is delimited on one side by the two storey semicircular construction with rests of fresco mythological figures of the second halfth of the 6th century. From the courtyard of the Pozzo, through a door you enter the so called historical jails,a ramp goes down into an underground room at the end of which, besides a hallway there is a corridor that goes to the dismal cells . Crossing the semicircolare gallery or " Stroll of Pious IV " there are the small rooms used at first as a residence for the families of the papal court and as military jails. You arrive at the room Paolina that was the great saloon of representation whose decorative project is owed to Perin of the Vague , in whose vault you can admire the six histories of Alexander Magno by Mark Pino. At the four angles the farnesian enterprises of the lily of justice and the dolphin with the salamander and at the center Paul's III coat of arms between two panels that show an inscription in Greek and bas-reliefs in plaster with sea creatures and triumph of Galatea. In the two circles you can notice the blinding of Elima and Saint Paul preaching to the pagans and of particular importance are the Conversion of St. Paul and St. Paul preaching to the Jewish. From the Room Paolina, along a corridor with frescoes you go into the Library Room , a room of representation in whose great vault are frescoed the Roman histories and the episodes of emperor Adriano's life.
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