Fluid City: River Gods in Rome and Contested Topography

Abstract

Few major cities have undergone so thorough a transformation as early modern Rome, where a shrunken “gigantic cadaver” became a paradigmatic early modern theater of architectural magnificence, worthy of its ancient predecessor. No single site better exemplifies this transformation than the Campidoglio, the ancient Capitoline Hill, surmounted by a grand piazza bordered on three sides by palaces but open to the city on the fourth side where St. Peter’s dome, designed by Michelangelo for Pope Paul III (r. 1534–49), rises above the distant skyline. The same architect and patron played key roles in the sixteenth-century remodeling of the Campidoglio (Fig. 1), though the only building actually erected on the hill by the pope was not part of Michelangelo’s Capitoline ensemble. Early in his long pontificate, Paul saw to the construction of the Torre Farnese (or Paolina), a fortified residence designed with an eye to defense and domination, certainly not aesthetics. Until its demolition to make way for the Victor Emmanuel Monument (1885), the Torre Farnese was a looming presence on the hill, overlooking a city where by now numerous palaces exemplified the classicizing, formal language of the Renaissance, of which it showed hardly a trace. Nor could there be a stronger contrast with Michelangelo’s highly innovative and allusive designs for the civic palaces on the Campidoglio, though these were not realized until long after Paul’s death (the date of the design is a different issue, as noted below), or indeed with the same architect’s work, from 1546, on Paul’s own family palace, the Palazzo Farnese. It has recently been suggested that we should see the rustic character of the Torre Farnese, traditionally sometimes referred to as a villa, in a more positive light, and as