Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
History
Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
Architecture -- History; Art -- Study and teaching; Historic buildings
“The cause of final ruin to this monument,” is described by Nibby to
have been the resentment of the citizens against a French governor who
espoused the cause of the anti-pope (Clement VII.) against Urban VI. in
1378. It was then that the marble casings were all torn from the walls
and used as street pavements.
A drawing of Sangallo of 1465 shows the upper part of the fortress
crowned with high square towers and turreted buildings; a cincture of
bastions and massive square towers girding the whole; two square-built
bulwarks flanking the extremity of the bridge, which was then so
connected with these outworks that passengers would have immediately
found themselves inside the fortress after crossing the river.
Marlianus, 1588, describes its double cincture of fortifications,--“a
large round tower at the inner extremity of the bridge; two towers with
high pinnacles, and the cross on their summits, the river flowing all
around.”
The Castle began to assume its present aspect under Boniface IX. in
1395. John XXIII., 1411, commenced the covered way to the Vatican,
which was finished by Alexander VI.; and roofed by Urban VIII., in
1630. By the last named pope the great outworks of the fortress were
built under Bernini, and furnished with cannon made from the bronze
roof of the Pantheon. Under Paul III. the interior was decorated with
frescoes, and a colossal marble angel erected on the summit, in place
of a chapel (S. Angelo inter Nubes), built by Boniface XIV. for the
existing angel of bronze, by a Dutch artist, Verschaffelt.
Of the Castle, as we now see it externally, only the quadrangular
basement is of the time of Hadrian; the round tower is of that of
Urban VIII., its top added by Paul III. The four round towers of the
outworks, called after the four Evangelists, are of Nicholas V., 1447.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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