Castel Sant'Angelo
Museo Nazionale Di Castel Sant'Angelo, Ministero Della Cultura; Within The UNESCO Historic Centre Of Rome (1980) · Rome, Lazio
Hadrian's tomb, built in the late 130s as a drum of brick and travertine on a square base beside the Tiber, and then never allowed to be a tomb for long. The popes turned it into a fortress, ran an eight-hundred-metre walled corridor from the Vatican to its door, and used it to hide in: Clement VII sat out the Sack of Rome here in 1527 while the city burned below. It has been a barracks, a prison holding Giordano Bruno and Benvenuto Cellini, and since 1925 a museum. The route climbs Hadrian's original spiral ramp, passes through papal apartments frescoed under Paul III, and comes out on a terrace beside a bronze archangel sheathing his sword, the figure that gave the castle its name after a vision during the plague of 590. Tosca throws herself off that terrace in the last act of the opera. Since December 2024 the escape corridor itself has been open to the public again, on guided visits booked separately.
Lungotevere Castello 50, Rome, Lazio, 00193, Italy
Tuesday to Sunday 09:00-19:30, last entry and ticket office 18:30. Closed Mondays, 1 January and 25 December, except the first Monday of each month when it opens 14:00-20:00 at a reduced price, ticket office only. Free on the first Sunday of the month. Summer evening openings run some years with performances in the courtyards and on the terrace. The Passetto di Borgo runs Thursday to Sunday in set windows and is closed on first Sundays.
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