Returning to talk about Castel Sant’Angelo (after the latest article on Emperor Hadrian that you can read here), now the time has come to know why the emperor’s ancient mausoleum, today, is known by this name. Why angel? Which angel is it? Follow me on this journey through history, art and tradition. 

Today we are drawn to the bronze statue of an angel, placed on the top of the building, in the act of sheathing the sword. Why? Here is the story, as it has been handed down to us by historical sources. It is 590 A.D., and shortly after his election pope Gregory the Great had to face a terrible emergency: an epidemic was scourging Rome, filling the City with corpses, famines and plagues that seemed to have no end. The pope, one of the first pontiffs in history to truly take the administrative reins of the city, did not lose heart. After all, he was a man capable of anything, if it is true that he abandoned a brilliant political career to embrace the clerical world, even becoming pontiff! On 3 September of that year he decided to organize an imposing procession, which would cross the main streets of the city, to ask God for the grace to end the epidemic. The chronicles tell us how thousands of people took part in the procession but also how the weather conditions certainly did not help. To the plague was also added great heat, which led to the death of 80 faithful who were, with hope, taking part in the procession. Having reached about halfway across Ponte Elio (named after emperor Hadrian), the structure that still today leads us toward the castle, Gregory the Great and the whole crowd were left astonished. From the top of what for them was still the Mausoleum of Hadrian they saw the Archangel Michael appear, blazing with light, in the act of sheathing his sword with its fiery blade. Once the weapon entered completely into the scabbard, the epidemic ceased and Rome was able to breathe again and survive. This is the reason why, even today, the fortress and the bridge are called of the Angel. But now let us move on to an even more curious story.

It is only from the 1400s that the fortress has had an angel on its summit: it was pope Nicholas V, in fact, who commissioned an angel in marble with gilded wings. Unfortunately, however, in 1497 lightning struck the sculpture, which was replaced in 1544 by Raffaello da Montelupo at the wish of pope Paul III. This second version too, and twice over, was destroyed by lightning and then replaced. The statue survived until 1752, when Pope Benedict XIV, visiting the castle, saw that the work was in very poor condition. The following year, therefore, a new sculpture was inaugurated, in bronze, based on a design by Peter Anton van Verschaffelt. A sculpture still visible to the millions of tourists who visit the monument every year, perhaps unaware of the real reasons why an angel, or rather an archangel, is still the protagonist of the place. This, then, is the story of the symbol of a monument always present in the city skyline of Rome, a monument that certainly has been, for centuries, witness to the very long history of the Urbe (and if you want to understand in what way click here).