Piazza del Popolo

Piazza del Popolo started as nothing more than the northern most point of the Campo Marzio, the Field of Mars, that abutted the Pincio hill, which became known as the 8th hill of Rome. Mars eventually became the Roman god of war and was associated with his Greek predecessor Ares, but before that he was the god of cattle, fields and farms. Appropriate given the Campo Marzio was just that, a large field with cattle and farms for almost 500 years.

In the year 220 BC the censor Gaius Flaminus set to work on the Via Flamina, a road that would connect Rome with north territories of Italy, snaking north-east through modern day Lazio and Umbria, across the Apennines and ending in Rimini, on the Adriatic side of Italy, 209 miles from its starting point. The Via Appia Antica (Appian Way) was started in 312 BC and finished around the time that construction on the Via Flamina started, and while it is much more well known, the Via Flamina might have been even more important and has certainly had a greater impact on the more recent history of Rome (as in Renaissance/Baroque as opposed to ancient). Caesar and Crassus led their armies north along it in 49 BC, Vespasian lead his legions in 69 AD and possibly most significantly Constantine defeated Maxentius in 312 AD at the Milvian Bridge (where Via Flamina crosses the Tiber) thus ending the pagan era of the Roman Empire and started his reign of Christianity.

In more recent history, the Via Flamina, and its gate in the Aurelian Wall, served as any travelers entrance into Rome before the modern era trains. Ranging from the Queen of Sweden who came to Rome after abdicated the throne, to Charles Dickens on his family jaunt through Italy.

More and more buildings were built in the Campo Marzio as time progressed but it was not until the time of Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Roman republic that things really picked up. The Theater of Pompey, site of Caesar's assassination, was finished in 55 BC. The original Pantheon was built by Marcus Agrippa, Augustus' top general, in commemoration of his defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the decisive Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Augustus' mausoleum was built just before his death in 14 AD. The Pantheon as it stands today (Agrippa's burnt to the ground, twice) was built by Emperor Hadrian from 118-125. In 270 AD the Emperor Aurelian built the walls which bear his name to protect the crumbling city, marking the first time Rome had to defend its own city limits in over 600 years.

Piazza del Popolo so little of this action. The only things of note there before the Porta Flamina was established in the Aurelian walls were the Villas of the elite in what is now the Villa Borghese and the grave site of the Emperor Nero. Throughout the Middle Ages there was a walnut tree next to his tomb that was always full of crows, who Christians believed were tormenting the ghost, which could not rest because of how he persecuted Christians after the Great Fire of Rome, which they accused him of and he in turn accused them of (he had a little more power and oddly enough won that fight). In order to exorcise his demon Pope Pascal II (1099-1118) had the tree chopped down and a church built on the very spot where it had stood. That church was rebuilt in 1472 by Pope Sixtus IV who commissioned Andrea Bregno for the job. That church still stands today with some Baroque refinements done by Bernini in 1660 to make it fit in with the contemporary buildings.

The facade was modeled after Leone Battista Alberti's Santa Maria Novella in Florence, built just a few years before. The interior of the church is covered with the works of many of the Renaissance and Baroque greats. Raphael's Chigi Chapel (about a third of the way down on the left) was built for the rich banking family (whose family crest now adorns the outside of the church thanks to Pope Alexander VII, a Chigi, who commissioned Bernini to embellish the facade). Raphael designed the chapel but it was still unfinished upon his death in 1520 and was not completely until Bernini came along. The amazing Cerasi Chapel (1601 - just to the left of the main altar) houses two of Caravaggio's greatest works, the Crucifixion of St. Peter and The Conversion of Saul. These two pieces demonstrate why Caravaggio was so well known for his use of the color white. He used it incredibly sparingly, but placed in such positions of contrast that its effect was that much more amplified. The story of St. Peter's crucifixion ties in well with the chapels location because the Emperor Nero was the one who ordered the death of Peter. When Peter, who reportedly was held in the Mammertime prison in the Forum, was told he would be crucified he asked that he be crucified upside down because he felt he did not deserve to die the same way Jesus did.

Works of Pinturicchio can also be seen all over the church, although I must admit I do not know his work well enough to say much about them. I do particularly like his monochrome frescoes in the della Rovere chapel (on your right as you walk in) that represent the lives of the saints, and stuck out to me as something rarely seen but masterfully done.

Heading out of the church the massive Porta del Popolo (originally Porta Flamina) is to your right as was built by Bernini in 1655 to welcome Queen Christina of Sweden to Rome. Pope Alexander VII as celebrating her conversion to Christianity as well as her abdication of the throne. In most cities a ceremonial piece such as this would have been built in weather resistant plaster, but since this is Rome, it was built in marble and still stands today, bearing the Chigi family crest, six mountains with a star above them, on the side facing the piazza.

At the center of the Piazza stands the Obelisco Flaminio (Flaminian Obelisk) which was brought to Rome in 10 BC by Augustus from Heliopolis (modern day Cairo). By the Roman period Obelisks were viewed as giant phallic symbols and carrying them back to Rome across the Mediterranean was an ultimate showing of domination over conquered lands, but originally they had a greatly different significance going back 5000 years.

Every year the Nile's floods would recede and leave a pile of muck (for lack of better word) in the middle of the Nile delta. From this mound things would start to grow. The Egyptians viewed this as a miracle. They thought that the light of the sun combined with this mound, which they called the benben, were of a divine provenance. The sought to emulate this mound in their architecture, starting with the pyramid. Pyramids were built strictly of stone and as eternal houses for dead Pharaohs, who were viewed as gods. They built them with stone because stone was eternal and would not erode like the mudbrick they used for their houses in the this life, they thought the afterlife was everlasting and therefore needed more permanent structures. The tip of the pyramid (representing the life giving benben) was the point at which the sun god, Ra, could come and go as he pleased with the Pharaoh's eternal soul. The age of pyramids (roughly 2700-2300 BC) construction only lasted a few hundred years, but obelisks became a replacement for the pyramid and were built for another 1500 years.

The obelisk that stands in Piazza del Popolo was built by Ramses II (Ramses the Great) who ruled from 1279-1213 BC. Upon its arrival in Rome it was erected on the spina (literally 'spine' - the raised section in the middle of a stadium that the chariots raced around) of the Circus Maximus. It was torn down as some point by Christians who viewed it as a pagan symbol (I think) and later found buried in two pieces by Pope Sixtus V in 1587 and was erected two years later where it stands today.

The Piazza itself was designed by the neoclassical architect Giuseppe Valdier between 1811-22. The genius in his design was the how he connected the piazza with slopes of the Pincio hill above with a series of switch-back roads with look out points that offered varying views of the piazza and the city. The view for the very top, in the Villa Borghese, is one of Rome's finest of St. Peter's dome.