Indy Chronicler

Campo Marzio (Marzo is an archaic pronunciation) is a city district named after the Field of Mars (Campus Martius) of ancient Rome. The latter included the vast plains north of the Capitoline Hill, enclosed between the Tiber in the west and the Pincio and Quirinal hills in the east. Up until 275, in which Emperor Aurelian built a second group of walls, greatly expanding the city’s territory, this area was a suburb. It was dedicated to the god of war, because in the Republican era only military and athletic exercises were practiced here.

In the imperial era, when the city went beyond the old wall, several public buildings were built on Mars Field – stadiums, gymnasiums, theaters, navmachia, temples and altars dedicated not only to Mars but also to other gods. By the end of the 1st century, its territory was already completely built up.

Today’s Campo Marzio neighborhood occupies only the northernmost part of the ancient Mars Field, extending to the top of the Pincio Hill. It partially occupies the ancient Regio IX (Circus Flaminius) and Regio IV (Via Lata). The remainder of Campus Martius is divided between the modern neighborhoods of Colonna (III), Ponte (V), Parione (VI), Regola (VII), Sant’Eustachio (VIII) and Pigna (IX).

In the Middle Ages Campo Marzio was called Regio Posterule et Sancti Laurentii in Lucina, referring to several secondary gates (posterulae) of the Aurelian wall along the bank of the Tiber and the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, now located in the neighboring district of Colonna.

The coat of arms of the neighborhood is a crescent moon oriented in different directions.

Campo Marzio is bounded by the squares and streets piazzale Flaminio, via Luisa di Savoia, lungotevere Arnaldo Brescia, lungotevere in Augusta, piazza del Porto di Ripetta, lungotevere Marzio, via del Cancello, via dei Portogesi, via della Stelletta, piazza Campo Marzio, via degli Uffizi del Vicario, via di Campo Marzio, piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, via Frattina, piazza Mignanelli, via dei Due Macelli, via Capo le Caze, via Francesco Crispi, via di Porta Pinciana and via del Muro Torto.

After the fall of the Western Empire, Campo Marzio fell into a thousand years of neglect. The villas of the wealthy Romans on Pincio Hill (then called Collis Ortulorumi) and the public buildings on the plain were abandoned and the whole area became a ruin.

At the beginning of the 15th century, a small community of immigrants from Illyria and Slavonia (today’s Croatia and Slovenia) settled on its territory by the river. It was a slum area and the first charitable institutions opened there, such as the Hospital of St. Rocco (for infectious patients) and the Hospital of St. James the Incurable (for the poor).

In 1570, this part of Rome had running water again and its population began to grow. Soon Campo Marzio became a prestigious neighborhood, as evidenced by the numerous mansions of rich and aristocratic families built during this period.

Today, the layout of the neighborhood remains the same as it was in the 17th and 18th centuries, with narrow streets almost inaccessible to automobile traffic. And its hilly part is still covered with parks, including the famous Pincian Gardens (1) with their series of more than 200 busts of Italian figures and spectacular views of the city.

The hillside gardens are in stark contrast to the flat part of the neighborhood. Its bustling shopping streets are filled with thousands of fashionable stores, bars, restaurants and nightclubs located on the first and second floors of historic buildings. Sometimes it goes beyond all reasonable boundaries.

A typical example of such outrage is the small chapel of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament at Via Belsiana 43 (1724), recently converted into a showroom for a famous handbag brand (2).

There are also a number of historic establishments, such as the famous Caffé Greco (3) on Via dei Condotti, founded in 1760. Among its regulars were such international celebrities as Hector Berlioz, Nikolai Gogol, Giacomo Leopardi, Felix Mendelssohn, Richard Wagner, Orson Welles, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Arthur Schopenhauer and William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill.

During the day, especially on Saturdays, Campo Marzio is a chaotic place. Fortunately, in the evening, when the streets are empty, the atmosphere of the neighborhood is similar. But the best time to visit it is on Sunday mornings.

The central point of the district, from where the three straight streets that run along its entire length originate, is the wide oval Piazza del Popolo (4).

Its northern side is enclosed by the Porta del Popolo (ancient Porta Flaminia) city gate. The name of the place itself, Popolo, probably comes from a small grove of poplars (Latin populi) that used to be in this area. In ancient times, those who were forbidden to have a grave in church cemeteries – bandits, prostitutes, non-Christians and actors – were buried here, in mass graves. It is not hard to imagine that the dark fame of this area gave rise to corresponding legends.

According to one of them, the neighborhood has long been disturbed by the sign of Emperor Nero. The fact is that at the very gate was a large crypt of the family Domitius Agenobarbs, in which in 68 and was buried Nero, son of Agrippina the Younger and Gnaeus Domitius Agenobarbs. In the Middle Ages, the belief in the ghost of the late emperor became so widespread that in 1099 Pope Paschalius II ordered the destruction of the crypt and the construction of a small chapel in its place, which was later transformed into the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. The present building dates from 1475 and is considered the first church in Rome to receive a dome.

The interior decorations were done by famous Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Donatello and Andrea Brigno. There are also two famous paintings by Caravaggio and a chapel built for the banker Agostino Chigi by Raphael (around 1520). In the mid-17th century, this chapel was remodeled by Gianlorenzo Bernini at the request of Pope Alexander VII (a member of the Chigi family).

At the center of Piazza del Popolo is the tall obelisk of Flaminius, resting on a large base with four Egyptian lions and fountains at the corners. It is the work of Giuseppe Valadier, the architect who gave the square its present form in 1820. A smaller fountain, which has stood by the obelisk since the late 16th century, is now in Piazza Nicosia (5) in the same Campo Marzio neighborhood.

Three long straight diverging streets originate on the south side of the square, forming a so-called trident, the corners of which are marked by a pair of almost identical churches built in the second half of the 17th century.

The left street, Via del Babuino (6), was laid out between 1520 and 1535. It was originally named Paolina Trifaria, in honor of Pope Paul III, who officially opened it (trifaria means “one of three”). To speed up the settlement of the street, the pope exempted all foreigners who moved here from taxes. Soon the street changed its name. Its new name was based on the fountain (7) located about halfway along the street, known locally as Babuino (baboon), which was one of the “talking statues”. The fountain is near the church of St. Athanasius (1583), built by Giacomo della Porta. The clock on its left bell tower (now without hands) was presented to the church by Pope Clement XIV in 1771.

From the end of the 18th century, the building next to the church was the workshop of the famous sculptor Antonio Canova. After Antonio’s death in 1822, it was passed on to his most distinguished pupil, Adamo Tadolini, from whom it was in turn inherited by three generations of Tadolini sculptors. When the last of them died in 1967, the atelier, filled with original works, was closed. It was reopened in 2000, turning it into a small museum with a café on the first floor.

To the left of Via del Babuino, parallel to it, runs the charming Via Margutta (8), most of whose penthouses are art studios. Those who have seen the movie Roman Holiday may say that a reporter, played by Gregory Peck, lived on this street at number 51. Real-life characters who have lived on Via Margutta include director Federico Fellini, painter Renato Guttuso and a number of others. There is a small neighborhood fountain, Campo Marzio (1927), known as the artists’ fountain, with theatrical masks, brushes and easels. Since 1953, this street has been the site of the annual colorful open-air contemporary art exhibition “100 Artists on Via Margutta”.

Via del Babuino ends with one of the most favorite tourist spots, Piazza España (9), named after the old Spanish Embassy, founded here in the mid-17th century. One side of the square opens onto the famous Spanish Steps, rising picturesquely to the 16th-century Trinita dei Monti church, in front of which stands the small obelisk of Sallustius, a scaled-down Roman copy of the obelisk of Piazza del Popolo.
campo marzio

The staircase was built between 1721 and 1725 to symbolize peace between the French and Spanish communities, which had previously had friction. The former lived on the hill and the latter lived below. Before the stairs were built, there was only a rough and steep path on this side of the Pincio.

Below the Spanish Steps is the famous Barcaccia Fountain, designed in the Baroque style by Pietro Bernini, father of the more famous Gianlorenzo. The fountain, located below ground level, adorns the center of the square.

In the neighboring Piazza Mignanelli stands the Column of the Immaculate Conception, erected in 1857 by Pius IX to commemorate the relevant dogma he had proclaimed three years earlier. Every year here on December 8, the fire department climbs to the top of the column to the statue of the Virgin Mary mounted on it to lay a wreath of flowers. In the afternoon, the pope visits the monument. This tradition began in the 1920s.

At the top of the Spanish Steps, to the right of the church of Trinita dei Monti, Via Sistina and Via Gregoriana begin, separated by the small mansion of Palazzetto Zuccari (10), built for himself around 1590 by the famous late Renaissance painter Federico Zuccari. The mansion changed owners several times. In the early 18th century it served as the Roman residence of the Queen of Poland. At that time, a small porch with an upstairs balcony was added (the doorway still bears the Polish coat of arms).

But the most striking of its doorways overlooks Via Gregoriana. It is shaped like a monster with an open mouth and framed by matching windows. It now houses the German library, the Bibliotheca Hertziana, which the philanthropist Henrietta Hertz gave to Rome in 1913.

To the left of the Trinita dei Monti, at a distance of about 200 meters, is the huge Villa Medici (11). It began construction over a pre-existing building in 1564 and was completed in 1576, when Ferdinando I de’ Medici, cardinal and future Grand Duke of Tuscany, bought the villa. He enlarged both the mansion and the lush garden behind, now neighboring the Pincio Gardens and occupying with them the entire eastern part of the district. A lover of antique art, the Cardinal assembled in the villa an extraordinary collection of Roman finds, partly dug up on his property and partly purchased.

However, a century and a half later, when the Medici branch to which Ferdinando belonged died out, the collection was moved to Florence and the entire property was given to Leopold of Lorraine, the new Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1803 Napoleon Bonaparte decided to turn the Villa Medici into the Roman residence of the French Academy of Young Artists, which is still housed in the building.

The central street of the trident is Via del Corso (12). In antiquity, this was the initial section of the Flaminia Road that crossed the built-up area north of the city limits (until 275 Rome ended at the foot of the Capitoline Hill). It was called Via Lata, as was the neighborhood surrounding it. This name was retained throughout the Middle Ages, until during the Renaissance, during Carnival, races began to be held along the street. People began to call the street il corso (the lane), from which came the further Corso Umberto I and finally the current Via del Corso. Today it is one of the main streets of Rome.

German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived in house number 18 during his two-year stay in Rome (1786-1788). It has now been turned into a museum.

On the right side of the street, just behind the church of Sant’Giacomo in Augusta, is the alley Via Antonio Canova, where the previously mentioned sculptor lived and had a large workshop (13). The workshop was created by buying and combining into one complex a number of houses previously owned by the Dominicans who ran the church of Santa Maria del Popolo.

Outside, the sculptor is commemorated by a bust and plaque from 1871, surrounded by ancient fragments attached to the wall. The studio is now occupied by a private art gallery, but much of its space has been converted into a day hospital for the historic St. James Hospital, located in a long building on the opposite side of the street. The hospital was founded in 1339, when this part of the neighborhood was virtually uninhabited. At that time it was named St. James of the Incurables because it admitted those with diseases for which there was no cure, such as syphilis or ulcers. A plaque on the Via del Corso reminds us that the hospital boasts the very first private connection to a branch of the aqueduct in 1572, when Rome once again had running water.

Further south on the street is the large church of Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso (14), more often called simply San Carlo al Corso, which belonged to a community of immigrants from Lombardy. In 1471, their community was granted a pre-existing church dedicated to St. Nicholas, after which its title was changed to St. Ambrosius, the patron saint of Milan. A second title was added in 1610, when the late Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, Bishop of Milan, was declared a saint.

At the same time, the church was completely rebuilt with the help of the architect Honorio Longhi, son of the better known Martino Longhi the Elder. The construction was completed with the erection of the dome by Pietro da Cortona. All the works took place between 1612 and 1669. The bright interior of the church, made in the late Baroque style, is decorated with gilded stucco and artificial marble. The nave ceiling is almost entirely covered with a large fresco by Giacinto Brandi depicting rebellious angels.

The third (right) street of the trident is Via di Ripetta (15), leading to the Tiber. It was named after the smaller of the two marinas of the Tiber that were liquidated at the beginning of the 20th century. In earlier times, the street was called Via Leonina, as it was opened around 1520 by Pope Leo X. In order to raise funds to complete the construction and paving of the street, the pope began to collect an annual tribute from the large number of prostitutes who lived and worked in the area, which is remembered as the whore tax.

This decision of the pope does not seem strange if we remember that a survey conducted in 1490 by order of Innocent VIII showed that the number of Roman prostitutes at that time amounted to 6,800, i.e. about 10% of the permanent population of the city. A survey in 1526 confirmed this figure, but the most surprising result came from the Campo Marzio neighborhood, where of the 4,750 inhabitants, 1,250 (more than a quarter!) lived in prostitution.

About midway along the Via di Ripetta, in a wide square close to the riverbank, are two of the most important monuments of ancient Rome, the Mausoleum of Emperor Octavian Augustus (16) and the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) (17), both dating from the early 1st century AD.

The huge tomb built for the first Roman emperor consists of three concentric brick cylinders of different heights, covered with turf. In the highest of the three, the inner one, there is a cell where the ashes of the emperor and many of his relatives and successors belonging to the Julian-Claudian dynasty were kept.

These are his wife Livia (29 BCE), his sister Octavia (11 BCE), his nephew and son-in-law Marcellus (23 BCE, the first of those buried in the mausoleum), his second son-in-law Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (12 BC) with his children Lucius (2 AD) and Gaius (4 AD), his third son-in-law and second emperor Tiberius (37 AD), Livia’s son from her first marriage Drusus (9 BC. CE), Druse’s son Germanicus (19 CE) and his wife Agrippina (37 CE), their son and third emperor Gaius, better known as Caligula (41 CE), Druse’s son and fourth emperor Claudius (54 CE). In addition to the relatives of Octavian Augustus, the mausoleum also held the urns with the ashes of Emperors Vespasian (79 AD), Nerva (98 AD) and even the wife of Septimius Severus, Julia Domna (217 AD). The only important member of the Julia-Claudian family not honored with burial in the mausoleum was Octavian’s daughter, Julia, who died in exile after being accused of adultery and treason.

The entrance to the mausoleum was originally framed by two obelisks made in Rome, which now adorn Quirinal Square and Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore.

The contents of the mausoleum were looted in the early Middle Ages, and in the 13th century the Colonna family turned it into their fortress. During the Renaissance, a garden with a hedge was built on its grounds. In the 18th century, the mausoleum was turned into an arena for mass entertainment such as bullfights and fireworks, naming it the Correa Amphitheater. In the second half of the 19th century, its popularity waned and the mausoleum was used as a warehouse for building materials. From 1907 to 1937 it served as a concert hall, until finally all the modern additions and a few old houses surrounding the structure were demolished. Since then, the square has acquired its present appearance and the mausoleum was declared a historical monument.

Only the ancient church of Sant Rocco, rebuilt in the Baroque era, was not demolished. It now stands next to another late Renaissance church dedicated to St. Jerome of Illyria, built by the Slavonian community that settled here in the previous century.

The Ara Pacis, now located between the river and the emperor’s tomb, was originally erected 150 meters from this site, in what is now the Colonna district, to commemorate the advent of a time of peace, the Pax Romana, following Octavian Augustus’ victorious campaigns in Spain and Gaul. On one side of the monument was the Solarium Augusti complex, a huge sundial built by Octavian, in which the obelisk now standing in Piazza Montechitorio served as a pointer. On September 23, the emperor’s birthday, the shadow of the obelisk pointed precisely to the center of Ara Pacis.

The altar itself is one of the most famous examples of ancient Roman marble work, as it is covered with bas-reliefs of very high quality. Some of them depict Octavian himself with members of his family during a ritual procession.

The original location of the altar corresponds to the present Via in Lucina, just outside the boundary of the Campo Marzio neighborhood. At some time it collapsed and was buried under a layer of rubble. Some fragments of the altar were discovered in 1568 at the foundations of a building in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. Several others were found in the same area in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. After that, the search for missing debris stopped because it threatened to collapse the local Teatro Olimpia (now a movie theater).

In 1937, on the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Octavian Augustus, work resumed, and a year later all the available fragments were assembled into a monument on the land cleared of houses between the mausoleum and the river. Some of the missing fragments, held in several other museums, were integrated into the altar as exact replicas.

The assembled Ara Pacis was enclosed in an external structure made of glass and concrete. Over time it became unsuitable to protect the monument from smog and overheating and was replaced in 2002-2006 by a modern Art Nouveau complex designed by American architect Richard Meyer. This new building immediately caused great controversy as it was deemed “too white, too modern and too bulky” for the environment in which it was located.

A hundred meters to the south stands the massive Palazzo Borghese (18), still the residence of the Roman branch of the aristocratic Borghese family. This mansion is considered one of the “Four Wonders of Rome” because of its architecture. “The core” of the building by Jacopo Barozzi dates back to 1560. Martino Longhi the Elder, Flaminio Ponzio and Carlo Maderno worked on the expansion of the palazzo from 1590 to 1613. At this time Cardinal Camillo Borghese, the future Pope Paul V. The palace is sometimes called a harpsichord because of its peculiar shape, with a double balcony (keyboard) on the shortest side. The facade of the building with the main entrance, usually closed, occupies one side of Piazza Borghese.

The other entrance to the palace is on the Largo della Fontanella di Borghese. When it is open, you can see the beautiful courtyard surrounded by a hundred columns, statues and fountains, but only from the outside. The collection of paintings once housed in the mansion is now almost entirely in the Galleria Borghese.

As mentioned above, in the 16th century Campo Marzio was overcrowded with prostitutes. In the second half of the century, Pope Pius V, inspired by the Counter-Reformation, decided to carry out a moralizing campaign and expel all female members of this profession from Rome. The municipal authorities resisted this decision, claiming that the loss of taxes collected from prostitutes would seriously damage the city’s finances. The result was a law that isolated all Roman prostitutes in the closed zone of Campo Marzio, the area where most of them lived. And since not everyone was willing to submit to such a rule, in 1569 the neighborhood was surrounded by a wall, just as 15 years earlier surrounded the Jewish Ghetto.

The fence of the Red Lantern Quarter stretched around the present-day Piazza Monte d’Oro, between the hostel for Slavonian women, adjacent to the Church of St. Jerome, and the now defunct convent of Santa Monica dei Martelluzzi, bordering the Palazzo Borghese. All women living inside the fenced area were required to return to their enclave before sunset, after which the doors were closed. The area itself was forbidden to enter during Lent, so as not to distract from religious rituals. However, women were free to go outside the fence during the day, which made this measure practically useless.

By the end of the century, the number of prostitutes had become so large that there were calls to expand the enclave to other streets in Campo Marzio. However, by this time the neighborhood was already built up with wealthy mansions, and the proposals for expansion were rejected. Soon the enclave itself ceased to exist.