Capitoline Hill

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Image:Palazzo dei Senatori in the Piazza del Campidoglio.jpg The Capitoline Hill (Capitolinus Mons), between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the most famous and highest of the seven hills of Rome, the site of a temple for the Capitoline Triad: the gods Jupiter, his wife Juno and their daughter Minerva. The temple was started by Rome's fifth king, Tarquinius Priscus, and was considered one of the largest and the most beautiful temples in the city. When the Celtic Gauls raided Rome in 387 BC, the Capitoline Hill was the one section of the city to evade capture by the barbarians.

The Capitoline echoes with famous events in Roman history; it was here that Brutus and the assassins locked themselves inside the Temple of Jupiter after murdering Caesar; here that the Gracchi plotted and died; here the triumphant generals overlooked the city for which they fought; here that the Sabines, creeping to the Citadel, were let in by the infamous Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius. For this she was the first to suffer the punishment for treachery of being thrown off the steep crest of the hill to fall on the dagger-sharp Tarpeian Rocks below, and therefore gave her name to them. When Julius Caesar suffered an accident during his Triumph, clearly indicating the wrath of Jupiter for his actions in the Civil Wars, he approached the hill and Jupiter's temple on his knees as a way of averting the unlucky omen (he was murdered six months later)[1].

From 1536 until 1546, Michelangelo transformed the Campidoglio, as Romans had come to know it, with his three palazzi that enclose a harmonious and urbanely-coherent trapezoidal space, approached by the ramped staircase called the "Cordonata". Reversing the classical orientation of the Capitoline, which had overlooked the Forum, the great architect, in a symbolic gesture, turned orientation to face Papal Rome. The three palazzi are now home to the important Capitoline Museums.

The church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli is adjacent to the square, located adjacent to where the ancient arx or "citadel" atop the hill once stood. At its base are the remains of a Roman insula, with more than 4 stores visible from the street.

The English word capitol derives from Capitoline Hill. Image:Cordonata 1.jpg

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Cordonata

The Cordonata is a monumental stair to reach the high piazza of the hill Capitoline, the heart of classical Rome. It was created by the renaissance painter, sculptor and poet Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564).

It is especially notable for its extremely wide steps - so designed so that nobles on horseback could ascend the hill without dismounting.

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