Friday 2 January 2009

A week of castles: Day 5 - Castel S. Angelo, Rome


Postmarked the Vatican City, dated 18 July 1982.

Roma
Ponte e Castel S. Angelo
Pont et Château St Ange
Bridge and Castel St Angel
Brücke und Englesburg

Castel Sant'Angelo is one of the most interesting of Rome's sights.  It originally was the tomb for the Emperor Hadrian (of Hadrian's Wall fame) and inside you can still walk the spiral staircase designed for the funeral cortege.  Later it was seen as having military significance because of its position, and was subjected to many alterations over the years.

In 1377, the Popes turned it into an impregnable citadel and to this day there is an underground passage connecting it to the Vatican.  Inside they created elegant papal apartments, and a strong room with a huge safe, and a prison.

The Castel is mentioned in Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons".  The hired killer is pushed from a balcony and falls to his death below.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

3 comments:

  1. what a nice blog! your pictures make me dream about an endless travel around the world! what about a link exchange with my travel blog?
    happy new year from Florence, Italy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love visiting you and traveling around the world from the comforts of home. You provide such a wonderful and exciting service with your blog. I look forward to so much more in 2009. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I follow your blog religiously on RSS but I have to say - this is one of my favourite postcards of all time!!

    ReplyDelete

Welcome to my postcard collection! I love hearing what you think of the cards - but spam WILL be deleted.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...