The Piazza del Papa[69] lies a little to the right of the entrance door to the Duomo. In former times the straw market was held in this square, which was then called the Piazza di Paglia, and at that period the statue of Pope Julius occupied a splendid position on the steps of the cathedral. But during the great revolt against the Papacy in 1780 the Pope's statue was taken away from its prominent place by some wise persons who foresaw its destruction should they allow it to remain there, and it was bundled into the cellar of a tavern in the town, where it remained, not, it must be confessed, entirely incognito, till people's nerves had calmed a little.[70] Not so very long ago the Pope was once more brought to the light of day and set in his present position. Pope Julius III. is a great figure in Perugian history. He is in a sense a lay figure, for he never set foot in the city after his student days, and he was worshipped almost in the manner of an unseen deity by the Perugians. Julius succeeded Paul III., and though he by no means did away with the supreme power of the [Illustration: HOUSE IN THE VIA PERNICE] Church in the city, still he mitigated many of the hardships and the ignominies which that power had entailed in the hands of the great Farnese. When Paul III. died in 1549 his fortress remained as a legacy to the city, with a Castellano to watch over its (Papal) interests. This man proceeded to rule as his master had taught him, and he defended the castle vigilantly against the Pope's nephew, who made some efforts to gain possession of so rich a prize. The policy of Julius III. was of a much milder order. "Julius had always loved our city with a peculiar partiality," says Mariotti, "and he sent his relation Cardinal della Corgna hither, endowing him with full authority, and hardly had the Cardinal arrived than he restored to the city the arms of which she had been deprived so long; and in February of that same year Julius III. sent a brief to the holders of ecclesiastical liberty, which was addressed to the _Priori delle Arte_ (heads of City Guilds), a title which had not been heard of in Perugia since 1539; and to this grace the same Pope added considerable sums of money for the maintenance of those same magistrates...." It will be easy to anyone who has formed even a dim conception of what the strength of the spirit of liberty was like in the minds of the Perugians to understand the pure sensation of delight which the Pope's open acknowledgment of their old municipal rule, followed as it was by a message couched in such friendly terms, was likely to produce. Fretting as the citizens had been for many years under the rule of the despotic Paul, they hailed his more temperate successor as a sort of saviour, and they determined to express their sentiments of joy in what Bonazzi fitly terms "a day of political bacchanalia."[71]