All images © by Roberto Piperno, owner of the domain. Write to email@example.com. Text edited by Rosamie Moore.
Page revised in January 2010.
Porta S. Pancrazio (Book 1) (Day
All images © by Roberto Piperno, owner of the domain. Write to email@example.com. Text edited by Rosamie Moore.
Page revised in January 2010.
Porta S. Pancrazio (Book 1) (Day 6) (Map D3) (Rione Trastevere)
When Rome was founded on the Palatine the opposite bank of the River Tiber was controlled by the Etruscans; it was only during the early Republican period that the Romans were able to expand their city to Trastevere (Lat. Transtiberim, across the Tiber). They fortified it with walls which started along the river and reached the top of the Janiculum, a long hill behind the new regio, the name they gave to the quarters of the city. The western gate of the walls became known as Porta Aurelia, because it was the starting point of Via Aurelia, the road linking Rome with the coast of the northern Tyrrhenian Sea and from there with France. In the XVIIth century, during the pontificate of Pope Urban VIII, Porta Aurelia was replaced by Porta S. Pancrazio, a new gate named after the nearby Basilica di S. Pancrazio. It was protected by two massive bastions.
Porta S. Pancrazio and the new walls surrounding Trastevere were built by Pope Urban VIII in just two years (1642-44), because he feared an imminent attack on the city by the Farnese and their allies; as a matter of fact this threat did not materialize. When eventually in 1849 a foreign army attempted to enter Rome through this gate, it was not that of an enemy of the pope, but the French troops sent by President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte to restore Pope Pius IX at the head of the Papal State.
The new gate was designed by Virginio Vespignani (also the architect of the external side of Porta Pia); it lacks the elegance of the previous building; only the coats of arms of the popes (Pius IX and Urban VIII) follow XVIIth century patterns (see the coat of arms of Pope Innocent X by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Piazza Navona).
Giuseppe Garibaldi is the most popular Italian national hero; he won the admiration of the Italian and international public opinion by his 1860 conquest of Sicily and southern Italy at the head of a thousand volunteers and also because he refused to be involved in petty politics. There is not a major Italian town without a monument to him; in Rome the area near Porta S. Pancrazio was thought to be the most appropriate location for a monument because Garibaldi played a major role in the 1849 defence of Rome.
The monument was built at the centre of a large terrace which commands an excellent view over Rome; it corresponds to the point from which Giuseppe Vasi designed his Grand View of Rome; the bronze group in the front of the monument portrays an episode of the 1849 defence of Rome: Luciano Manara at the head of a regiment of Bersaglieri attacking the enemy at Villa Corsini.
The whole Janiculum (which is not one of the historical seven hills of Rome) retains memories of the fierce fight which preceded the entrance of the F