Piazza del Campidoglio

Capitoline Hill

Capitolino

il Campidoglio

Monte Capitolino

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian architect, 1475-1564)

J.J. Olivier and Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Horace (French painter, draftsman, and educator, 1802-1897)

Rome, Lazio, Italy

Italy

1538-1564 (creation)

16th century

plan of the site and first floor of capitol buildings, plans

A few years after he arrived in Rome, Pope Paul III (Farnese) decided to reshape the Capitoline Hill into a monumental civic piazza

Michelangelo designed the project and his Piazza del Campidoglio is one of the most significant contributions ever made in the history of urban planning. The hill's importance as a sacred site in antiquity had been largely forgotten due to its medieval transformation into the seat of the secular government and headquarters for the Roman guilds, and it was in forlorn condition when Michelangelo took charge of reorganizing it as a dynamic new center of Roman political life. The project went forward in slow stages with many interruptions

little was built before his death in 1564. It was begun in 1538 and was not completed until the seventeenth century, but Michelangelo's original design is preserved in engravings from the 1560s by Étienne Dupérac. pp.313-314 [Della Porta added the central window of Il Palazzo Nuovo.] Buildings and equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius restored in the 1990s

line drawings (drawings)

Architectural Documentation

piazzas

squares

open spaces

plans

Renaissance

Italian

architectural exteriors

City planning

Letarouilly, Paul Marie. Edifices de Rome Moderne. Paris: A. Morel, 1868, 353.

Public Domain

Capitoline Palaces, Rome

Palazzo Nuovo (Capitoline Museum)

Palazzo dei Conservatori

Palazzo Senatorio

Buonarroti, Michelangelo