Final Theory Paper: Piazza del Campidoglio

Jetlagged, dirty, and disoriented after spending eight straight hours on an airplane, we decided that instead of napping and showering, it was time for our first adventure in Rome.  We set out and wandered the streets with no clue of where we were or where we were headed.  But as we turned the next corner, I saw an extremely tall stairwell topped with an old, rustic church and recalled a history class. No, yes, yes there it is! The Campidoglio!  I ran up those horse stairs so fast that I did not realize how bad my legs actually hurt.  When we got to the top I was finally reoriented, I was in Rome.

I was on top of the world at Piazza del Campidoglio, or “Caput Mundi” as the Italians call it.  To emphasize this feeling, the piazza’s ground rounds up and gets higher towards the center.  Its shape is “perfect,” but it is not a square.  The shape is trapezoidal. “Michelangelo envisioned the future piazza as a trapezoid since the two existing buildings were placed at an oblique angle to each other” (Zucker, Town and Square: 146).  When Michelangelo designed the space, he shaped it to give the illusion of a perfect square. This is most apparent at the top of the stairs, where the piazza widens in order to lead us towards the centered palazzo in the space, Palazzo dei Senatori, Rome’s city hall, “the perspective helps to monumentalize the Palazzo dei Senatori.  This stage effect already suggests a movement toward the background, a typically baroque trait” (Zucker, Town and Square: 146).  Palazzo dei Senatori is clearly the most important palazzo of the piazza, which one can see by its unique centered clock tower and its grand stairwell designed by Michelangelo.

All three palazzi, Palazzo dei Senatori, Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Capitoline Museum, had been resurfaced to have a more unified appearance.  This included the use of the giant order, which gives each building a sense of grandeur by extending the pilasters past just one story.  The base level of the two side palazzi also include columns of the normal order, which uses the two scales in order to further emphasize just how tall the giant order is spanning.  “The verticals of the Corinthian columns tie together all three structures” (Zucker, Town and Square: 147).  Another touch to unify the piazza is the trapezoidal void itself.  The travertine pattern in the ground, the oval, directs the visitor towards the center, where the statue of Marcus Aurelius stands.  One area that pedestrians do not realize is unifying the space is where the three buildings connect, underneath the piazza itself, as part of the Capitoline Museum.

We noticed just why the Piazza del Campidoglio was a Michelangelo masterpiece.  By taking what already existed, he became the second man and continued to complete the design.  As we exited the piazza, the view over the stairs pointed towards St. Peter’s Basilica.  Exhausted, excited, and finally oriented, our adventure was over, yet the semester had just begun.

Zucker, Paul. Town and Square. New York: Columbia UP, 1959. Print.