campidoglio

On commission of Pope Paul III in 1536, Michelangelo restored the Campidoglio in Renaissance style and already in 1870 the Palace of the Senators became home to the Offices of the Major of Rome. Michelangelo was left free to plan the restoration of the entire Capitoline area. His is the modern Capitoline Square realised in trapezium design - at the centre of which stands a copy of the famous mounted statue of Marcus Aurelius, and the twin marble covered palaces on either side of the square - the New Palace (Palazzo Nuova) and the Palace of the Conservatives (Palazzo dei Conservatori), built on the foundations of the Temple to Jupiter. The gradual and solemnly imposing staircase – la Cordonata, with two laterally placed Egyptian lions taken from the Temple to Isis in Campus Martii, sited at its base - is the ramp designed and carried out by Michelangelo to give access to the Campidoglio itself. It adjoins the previous ramp ordered two centuries earlier by Cola di Rienzo, which  leads up to the medieval church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli,(Holy Mary at Heaven’s Altar), with its severe XIIIth century Romanesque façade.