The World's First Capitol

The Capitoline Museums, a Michelangelo-designed piazza, and killer views atop Rome's Campidoglio—The Capitoline Hill

The

Capitoline Hill,

behind Piazza Venezia's Vittorio Emanuele monument, has been the administrative seat of Rome's civic government since the 11th century, and was a highly venerated spot used for the highest of state occasions in ancient Republican Rome—where do you think we get the word "capitol" from?

Leda and the Swan
For those who've forgotten their ancient mythology: after Leda made it with the swan—really Zeus/Jupiter in disguise—she laid an egg out of which hatched triplets. See, the identical brothers Castor and Pollux had a fraternal sister named Helen, who would grow up to be a real beauty, get kidnapped, and cause the whole Trojan War debacle. Aeneas, fleeing a burning Troy, would have a series of adventures (chronicled in Virgil's matserful propaganda poem The Aeneid) and eventually go on to build the city of Rome. The Romans, counting back a few steps, decided they really dug the whole Leda story.

The top of the hill is now marked by the trapezoidal

Piazza del Campidoglio,

designed by Michelangelo and a favored site for Roman wedding photos. You arrive via a long set of low, weirdly sloping steps that were built to accommodate carriages.

The top of the staircase is guarded by two oversized (but oddly flattened) statues of the dioscuri, Castor and Pollox (see sidebar). A half-hidden little path to the left leads through a miniature garden to the church of

Santa Maria in Aracoeli.

» FULL STORY

The pavement of the piazza consists of a complex, twelve-pointed starlike pattern centered around the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, his outstretched hand seeming to bless the city of Rome. This statue is actually a copy created in the 1990s using computers and lasers (real cool). The AD 2nd-century original now sits 30 yards away, behind glass in the Palazzo Nuovo wing of the Capitoline Museums.

A Secret Panorama
Standing on Piazza del Campidoglio, walk around the right side of Palazzo Senatorio to a curve in the barely trafficked access road used by city dignitaries (and wedding parties) where a narrow terrace overlooks the city's best panorama of the Roman Forum, with a backdrop made up of the Palatine Hill to the right, the Colosseum in the middle, and a drunkely leaning medieval tower to the left. I love trudging up the Campidoglio steps after dark (often as part of my long walk home after dinner) to take in this view floodlit at night. You may have to find a bit of railing at a courtesy distance from pairs of lip-locked lovers, but it's a magical view.

The piazza is flanked on three sides by palaces, their facades tweaked by Michelangelo to create a harmonious whole. The central

Palazzo Senatorio

houses the office of Rome's mayor. The two side palaces house a twinned pair of Rome's top museums, collectively known as the

Musei Capitolini, or Capitoline Museums,

filled with equisite ancient marble and bronze sculptures, the remains of a colossal ancient statue, and baroque paintings by the likes of Caravaggio, Titian, Rubens, and Il Guercino. » FULL STORY

The Campidoglio also contains a

killer shortcut to the Forum.

From the main square, walk around the left side of the Palazzo Senatorio, past a public drinking fountain with some of the sweetest water in Rome, and you'll find a stair that winds down along the Forum wall, passing close by the upper half of the Arch of Septimius Severus (great for close-up perusal of its reliefs), and then out around to the Forum's main entrance. » FULL STORY