Passetto di Borgo, Rome, Italy.
The “Passetto”, a walled corridor that connects the Vatican to the Roman fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo, constituting a military watchtower and a possible escape route for popes over the centuries, will now be open to the public.
“We are truly happy to return to Rome a fundamental piece of its ancient and recent history”, celebrated Daniela Porro, director of archeology, at the inauguration on Monday.
This corridor, usually closed to the public, can be visited from this Tuesday thanks to a special program of guided tours, after a restoration that began in 2018 and which also allowed it to be adapted for people with reduced mobility.
Rome thus recovers a key place in its immeasurable history, precisely on the eve of Pope Francis inaugurating the Jubilee with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica.
O “Passetto” is an 800-meter corridor that connects the Vatican to Castel Sant’Angelo, an imposing fortress built over the tomb of Emperor Hadrian, on the banks of the Tiber River.
Its origins date back to 547, when the barbarian king Totila besieged Rome, but it was Pope Leo IV who, in 852, after the collapse of the empire, erected this five-meter-high fortification to defend the Holy See and its surroundings.
Although some scholars believe that the corridor that has survived to this day dates back to 1277, commissioned by Pope Nicholas III, the first to move the papal residence from the Palace of Saint John Lateran to the Vatican.
In any case, the “Passetto” it was used by the popes to control their surroundings or to take their prisoners to the dungeons of Castel Sant’Angelo, as in the famous case of Beatrice Cenci, a noblewoman and popular heroine who crossed it in chains before being executed in 1599 for the murder of her heartless father.
Pope Alexandre VI and Clement VII no “Passeto”
But, above all, this wall provided the popes with a quick and discreet escape route in case of attack (the popes reigned in Rome from the Papal States until the fall of the Papal States in 1870 and its subsequent integration into the newly born Italian State ).
One of the sovereigns who had to cross the “Passetto” was the Pope Alexander VIknown as Rodrigo Borgia, who took refuge in the heights of the fortress after the invasion of Rome by Charles VIII of France.
But the most memorable event occurred in the sad “Kick-off of Rome”when the city was razed by the troops of Charles I of Spain due to Clement VII’s support for rival France.
It is said that the Pope had to run down the corridor, covered by a black cloth to prevent his white clothes from revealing him, while Charles I’s German militia fired from below (some bullets can still be seen in the wall).
Clement VII narrowly escaped thanks to the intervention of the Swiss Guard, although many of his soldiers were massacred. Of a garrison of 189 soldiers, only 42 survived the attack on May 6, 1527. Since then, every year, the new guards are inaugurated on the same day by the Pope of the time.
“Why shouldn’t I laugh?”
This papal escape remained in the city’s imagination, and even a Lansquenete, an imperial militiaman, left writing on the invaded house of banker Agostino Chigi: “Why shouldn’t I laugh? We made the Pope run”graffitied on a fresco in the palace.
But the “Passetto” is also the object of numerous Roman anecdotes: Since it was used by Pope Borgia to reach his lovers in the castle, it is said that crossing it 77 times — about 60 kilometers — restores men’s lost virility.
The unusual opening of this wall begins with an explanatory projection, before the severe gaze of the bust of one of the most hated popes, the Inquisitor Paul IV, whose statue ended up in the river after his death in 1555.
Visitors can now physically walk along this wall to a tower next to the Vatican colonnade. From there, a gate interrupts the walk, marking the beginning of another country: the Vatican City State, a minimal remnant of the ancient and extinct pontifical empire.
