PONTE SANT’ANGELO

Description

Essentials about the Ponte Sant’Angelo in brief

The Ponte Sant’Angelo is the most famous and also the most beautiful bridge of Rome. In 136, Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a bridge to connect his mausoleum (today’s Castel Sant’Angelo) with the city center on the other side of the Tiber River. Originally, therefore, the bridge was also called Pons Aelius after Hadrian’s family name (his full name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus).

The name “Ponte Sant’Angelo”

The bridge owes its current name to the legend that in 590 an archangel on the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo announced the end of the plague. Since then, Hadrian’s Mausoleum has been called Castel Sant’Angelo and the bridge in front of it Ponte Sant’Angelo. It is therefore a misconception that the name comes from the statues of angels on the bridge. Rather, it comes from the archangel statue on the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo.

The statues of the Ponte Sant’Angelo

In any case, the ten magnificent angels in Baroque style give the bridge its incredible beauty. They were created by the Italian master sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The angels all bear symbols from the Passion story, such as the cross, the crown of thorns, the lance, the nails and the whip. Two of the statues are by Bernini himself, namely the angel with the crown of thorns and the angel with the INRI inscription. Since the pope at the time thought the two statues were too beautiful to be left out in the open, they were replaced with copies. Bernini’s originals are today in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte.

The architecture of the Ponte Sant’Angelo

Originally, the bridge consisted of three curved arches. In the 17th century, two smaller arches were added to the bridgeheads. The Ponte Sant’Angelo represented one of the main bridges of Rome. Especially during the so-called Holy Years, an unimaginable number of pilgrims came to Rome to secure the promised indulgences of their sins. The narrow bridges over the Tiber then represented real bottlenecks. The throng of pilgrims across the Ponte Sant’Angelo amidst the stalls of hawkers, jugglers and artisans is described by numerous chroniclers in the most colorful metaphors. At the south end of the bridge there are statues of the apostles Paul and Peter from the middle of the 16th century. They replaced two small chapels that commemorated the greatest disaster on the bridge in the 15th century. In 1450, a rider lost control of his horse and caused a mass panic that led to the collapse of the ballustrade. 172 pilgrims met their deaths at that time.