Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LEGENDARY CRIMES
On the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Curia of the Teatro di Pompeo
- a vast theatre complex that covered much of what is now the Largo di Torre Argentina (
Click here
). The exact
location of the murder scene has always been a mystery but in October 2012 a team of Spanish archaeologists an-
nounced that they had found it on the Teatro Argentina side of the Area Sacra. As evidence they pointed to a con-
crete structure that they believed was a memorial placed on the spot by Augustus, Caesar's heir and successor.
Violent crime is a recurring feature of Rome's long and tortuous history. The city was founded on the back of a
murder - Romulus' killing of his twin Remus on the Palatino (
Click here
) - and blood stains many of the city's
palazzi
. One of the city's most notorious crimes took place in Palazzo Cenci (
Click here
) in the Jewish Ghetto.
There Beatrice Cenci, a young aristocrat, was driven by years of abuse to murder her tyrannical father. After a
long and brutal investigation she and her accomplice, her stepmother Lucrezia, were beheaded on 11 September
1599 in front of a vast and largely sympathetic crowd on Ponte Sant'Angelo (
Click here
).
PALAZZO MADAMA
PALACE
( 06 6706 2430;
www.senato.it
; Piazza Madama 11; guided tours 10am-6pm, 1st Sat of month Jul-Sep;
Corso del Rinascimento)
F
Seat of the Italian Senate since 1871, the regal Palazzo Madama
was originally the 16th-century residence of Giovanni de' Medici, the future Pope Leo X.
It was enlarged in the 17th century, when the baroque facade was added together with the
decorative frieze, and later provided office space for several pontifical departments.
The name 'Madama' is a reference to Margaret of Parma, the illegitimate daughter of
the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who lived here from 1559 to 1567.
CHIESA DI SANT'AGOSTINO
( Piazza di Sant'Agostino 80; 7.30am-12.30pm & 4-6.30pm; Corso del Rinascimento)
The plain white
facade of this early Renaissance church, built in the 15th century and renovated in the late
18th, gives no indication of the impressive art inside. The most famous work is Caravag-
gio's
Madonna dei Pellegrini
(Madonna of the Pilgrims) but you'll also find a fresco by
Raphael and a much-venerated sculpture by Jacopo Sansovino.
The
Madonna del Parto
(Madonna of Childbirth), Sansovino's 1521 statue of the Vir-
gin Mary with baby Jesus, is the subject of much local devotion, particularly by soon-to-
be mums who come here to pray for a safe pregnancy. The Madonna also stars in Cara-
vaggio's striking
Madonna dei Pellegrini
, which caused uproar when it was unveiled in
1604, due to its depiction of Mary as barefoot and her two devoted pilgrims as filthy beg-
gars. Painting almost a century before, Raphael provoked no such-scandal with his fresco
of Isaiah, visible on the third pilaster on the left in the nave.
CHURCH
