Capitoline Hill

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Coordinates: 41°53′36″N12°28′59″E﻿ / ﻿41.89333°N 12.48306°E﻿ / 41.89333; 12.48306


The Capitoline Hill
One of the seven hills of Rome
Latin nameCollis Capitolinus
Italian nameCampidoglio
Rione Campitelli
Churches Santa Maria in Aracoeli
Roman sculptures Colossus of Constantine
Model of the Capitoline Hill in ancient times, at the Museo della Civilta Romana Maquette de Rome (musee de la civilisation romaine, Rome) (5911810278).jpg
Model of the Capitoline Hill in ancient times, at the Museo della Civiltà Romana
Schematic map of Rome showing the Seven Hills and Servian wall Seven Hills of Rome.svg
Schematic map of Rome showing the Seven Hills and Servian wall

The Capitolium or Capitoline Hill ( /ˈkæpɪtəln,kəˈpɪt-/ KAP-it-ə-lyne, kə-PIT-; [1] [2] Italian : Campidoglio [kampiˈdɔʎʎo] ; Latin : Mōns Capitōlīnus [ˈmõːs kapɪtoːˈliːnʊs] ), between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the Seven Hills of Rome.

The hill was earlier known as Mons Saturnius, dedicated to the god Saturn.[ citation needed ] The word Capitolium first meant the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus later built here, and afterwards it was used for the whole hill (and even other temples of Jupiter on other hills), thus Mons Capitolinus (the adjective noun of Capitolium). In an etymological myth, ancient sources connect the name to caput ("head", "summit") and the tale was that, when laying the foundations for the temple, the head of a man was found, [3] some sources even saying it was the head of some Tolus or Olus. The Capitolium was regarded by the Romans as indestructible, and was adopted as a symbol of eternity. [4] [5]

By the 16th century, Capitolinus had become Capitolino in Italian, and CapitoliumCampidoglio. The Capitoline Hill contains few ancient ground-level ruins, as they are almost entirely covered up by Medieval and Renaissance palazzi (now housing the Capitoline Museums) that surround a piazza, a significant urban plan designed by Michelangelo.

The word Capitolium still lives in the English word capitol , and Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. is widely assumed to be named after the Capitoline Hill.

Ancient history



The Capitoline Hill cordonata (centre of picture) leading from Via del Teatro di Marcello to Piazza del Campidoglio. 0 Cordonata - Dioscuri - Palazzo Senatorio (2).JPG



Medieval history


In the Middle Ages, the hill's sacred function was obscured by its other role as the center of the civic government of Rome, revived as a commune in the 12th century. The city's government was now to be firmly under papal control, but the Capitoline was the scene of movements of urban resistance, such as the dramatic scenes of Cola di Rienzo's revived republic. In 1144, a revolt by the citizens against the authority of the Pope and nobles led to a senator taking up his official residence on the Capitoline Hill. The senator's new palazzo turned its back on the ancient forum, beginning the change in orientation on the hill that Michelangelo would later accentuate. A small piazza was laid out in front of the senator’s palazzo, intended for communal purposes. In the middle of the 14th century, the guilds' court of justice was constructed on the southern end of the piazza. This would later house the Conservatori in the 15th century. [12] As a result, the piazza was already surrounded by buildings by the 16th century.


View from the Piazza del Campidoglio Campidoglio Roma.jpg
View from the Piazza del Campidoglio
Piazza del Campidoglio, on the top of Capitoline Hill, with the facade of Palazzo Senatorio Campidoglio (Palacio Senatorio) September 2015-1.jpg
Piazza del Campidoglio at night Piazza del Campidoglio at night.jpg
Piazza del Campidoglio at night


Michelangelo's first designs for the piazza and remodeling of the surrounding palazzi date from 1536. His plan was formidably extensive. He accentuated the reversal of the classical orientation of the Capitoline, in a symbolic gesture turning Rome's civic center to face away from the Roman Forum and instead in the direction of Papal Rome and the Christian church in the form of St. Peter's Basilica. This full half circle turn can also be seen as Michelangelo's desire to address the new, developing section of the city rather than the ancient ruins of the past. [13] An equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius was to stand in the middle of the piazza set in a paved oval field. [12] Michelangelo was required to provide a setting for the statue and to bring order to an irregular hilltop already encumbered by two crumbling medieval buildings set at an acute angle to one another. [14] The Palazzo del Senatore was to be restored with a double outer stairway, and the campanile moved to the center axis of the palazzo. The Palazzo dei Conservatori was also to be restored, and a new building, the so-called Palazzo Nuovo, built at the same angle on the north side of the piazza to offset the Conservatori, creating a trapezoidal piazza. A wall and balustrade were to be built at the front of the square, giving it a firm delineation on the side facing the city. Finally, a flight of steps was to lead up to the enclosed piazza from below, further accentuating the central axis. [12]

A close-up of the cordonata on the Capitoline Hill. The steps on the left lead to the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Cordonata 1.jpg




Michelangelo's systematizing of the Campidoglio, engraved by Etienne Duperac, 1569 CampidoglioEng.jpg
Michelangelo's systematizing of the Campidoglio, engraved by Étienne Dupérac, 1569




The Horse statue in the entrance to Capitoline Hill, watercolor by Stanislaw Maslowski, 1904 Stanislaw Maslowski (1853-1926), The Horse statue in the entrance to Capitoline Hill, Rome,1904,watercolour, 32x43.5 cm.jpeg

Marcus Aurelius

Replica of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Capitoline Hill September 2015-1.jpg
Replica of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius



He provided new fronts to the two official buildings of Rome's civic government, the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the Senatorio, and finally the Nuovo. Michelangelo designed a new façade for the dilapidated Palazzo dei Conservatori and he designed the Palazzo Nuovo to be a mirror complement, thereby providing balance and coherence to the ragged ensemble of existing structures. [11] The construction of these two buildings were carried out after his death under the supervision of Tommaso Cavalieri. [13] The sole arched motif in the entire Campidoglio design is the segmental pediments over their windows, which give a slight spring to the completely angular vertical-horizontal balance of the design. The three palazzi are now home to the Capitoline Museums.

Palazzo Caffarelli Clementino


Palazzo dei Conservatori


Palazzo Senatorio

Built during the 13th and 14th centuries, the Palazzo Senatorio ("Senatorial palazzo") stands atop the Tabularium, which had once housed the archives of ancient Rome. Peperino blocks from the Tabularium were re-used in the left side of the palazzo and a corner of the bell tower. It now houses the Roman city hall, after having been converted into a residence by Giovanni Battista Piranesi for the Senator Abbondio Rezzonico in the 18th century. [21] Its double ramp of stairs was designed by Michelangelo. This double stairway to the palazzo replaced the old flight of steps and two-storied loggia, which had stood on the right side of the palazzo. The staircase cannot be seen solely in terms of the building to which it belongs but must be set in the context of the piazza as a whole. [12] The steps, beginning at the center of each wing, move gently upward until they reach the inner corner, level off and recede to the main surface of the façade. They then continue an unbroken stateliness toward each other, converging on the central doorway of the second story. [13] This interruption of the diagonal line and the brief inward change of direction both absorbs the central axis and links the two sides. The fountain in front of the staircase features the river gods of the Tiber and the Nile as well as Dea Roma (Minerva). The upper part of the facade was designed by Michelangelo with colossal corinthian pilasters harmonizing with the two other buildings. [22] Its bell-tower was designed by Martino Longhi the Elder and built between 1578 and 1582. Its current facade was built by Giacomo della Porta and Girolamo Rainaldi.

Palazzo Nuovo

To close off the piazza's symmetry and cover up the tower of the Aracoeli, the Palazzo Nuovo, or "New palazzo", was constructed in 1603, finished in 1654, and opened to the public in 1734. Its facade duplicates to that of Palazzo dei Conservatori. In other words, it is an identical copy made using Michelangelo's blueprint when he redesigned the Palazzo dei Conservatori a century earlier.






Influenced by Roman architecture and Roman republican times, the word Capitolium still lives in the English word capitol . [23] The Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. is widely assumed to be named after the Capitoline Hill. [24]

See also


  1. "Capitoline". Merriam-Webster Dictionary .
  2. "Capitoline - definition of Capitoline in English from the Oxford dictionary". . Retrieved 2016-01-20.
  4. Capitolium in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. Serv. ad Verg. A. 8, 345, and Arn. 6, p. 194
  6. Livy, Ab urbe condita , 1:33
  7. Albertoni and Damiani 2008
  8. 1 2 "Campidoglio" accessed march 23, 2012
  9. Aicher 2004
  10. Ancient Worlds: "Mons Capitolinus" Archived 2005-05-22 at the Wayback Machine .
  11. 1 2 3 Wallace, William (2010). Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 229–231.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Von Einem, Herbert (1973). Michelangelo. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd. pp. 197–206.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Morgan, Charles H. (1966). The Life of Michelangelo. New York: Reynal and Company. pp. 209–211.
  15. Giedion, Siegfried (1941). Space, Time and Architecture.
  16. Decker, Heinrich (1969). The Renaissance in Italy: Architecture • Sculpture • Frescoes. Viking Press. p. 283. ISBN   9780500231074.
  17. Charles De Tolnay, 1930.
  21. Lowe, Adam. "Messing About With Masterpieces: New Work by Giambattista Piranesi (1720-1778)," Art in Print, Vol. 1 No. 1 (May-June 2011), p. 23 fn. 3.
  22. Ackerman, James. The architecture of Michelangelo. Chicago, 1986, 154.
  23. Harper, Douglas. "Capitol". Online Etymology Dictionary .

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