Piazzi Di Ponte and the Military Origins of Panopticism
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13 ROME Piazzi di Ponte and the Military Origins of Panopticism RICHARD INGERSOLL Figure i. Detail from Gian Battista Nolli's 1748 map of Rome, showing Piazza di Ponte and radiating from it the streets of Via Paola (left), Via de' Banchi (center), and Via di Panico (right), marked in black. Piazza di Ponte, which disappeared with the cial areas of the abitato, was a significant site in construction of the Lungotevere river embank the ceremonial life and mythos of Rome. It ments in the 1880s, was the center point for a marked the passage from secular to sacred space system of radiating streets in the heart of Re for official visitors, pilgrims, and papal proces naissance Rome (fig. 1). The axis of the ancient sions. The sixteenth-century improvements to bridge of Castel Sant'Angelo and the course of the piazza at the bridgehead accommodated a the existing road along the river were intersected variety of rituals, but in particular became the by a trident of new streets that reached their scenic backdrop for the papal theater of terror architectural completion during the reign of as the site of frequent public executions. Pope Paul III Farnese (1534-49). The bridge, The geometric purity of the trident at Piazza which served as a hinge between the papal en di Ponte and the resulting star-shaped pattern clave of the Vatican Borgo and the vital commer have a formal architectural power that antici- i77 The Panopticon was a radially planned car- cerial building with all the cells visible from the central core; the architecture allowed the per son representing authority in the center to be all-seeing, or "panoptic." For Michel Foucault this liberal punative technology became a con ceit for modern power relations. Rather than exercise direct control over the body in the form of a public execution, the agents of power could use architecture to establish psychologi cal control over prisoners, and thus appear to be more humane.1 The eventual uses of Piazza di Ponte combined the pre-Enlightenment mandate to demonstrate control over the body of the wrongdoer with the more psychological aspects of panopticism. The bridge and the piazza are physically Figure 2. ViewofCastel pated the more celebrated trident at the gate of dominated by the impressive bulk of Castel Sant'Angelo. Piazza del Popolo, planned during the first two Sant'Angelo across the river (fig. 2). Originally decades of the sixteenth century and built some built as the tumulus mausoleum for Emperor time later. Renaissance artistic principles of Hadrian in the second century, Castel Sant'An symmetry, axiality, and uniformity are often cited gelo was over the centuries transformed into to explain its design. But while art undoubtedly an impenetrable fortress. The bridge, known in had much to do with the formal results, it was antiquity as Pons Aelius, was constructed as more than likely the art of war that was its chief part of the mausoleum complex and has sur inspiration. Considering the time of trident's vived, with many restorations and additions, final design, ten years after the Sack of Rome of to the present. Castel Sant'Angelo became the 1527-28, and the provenance of its design—from key to Roman defense, as well as a major icon Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, the architect of papal power and a frequent papal residence. responsible for the city's defenses—one may sup Placed at the apex of the castle, the sculpture of pose that more than just formal issues were in the Archangel Michael gave the building its volved in it. The radiating pattern of Piazza di post-classical name and stood as a reminder of Ponte is probably the first built realization of the the alleged power of popes to summon divine theory of military city planning advocated by intervention on behalf of the city. According Sangallo. In successive years the piazza was adapted to legend, in 590 the angel appeared to Pope for the rituals of public punishment: the views Gregory the Great on the roof of the mauso from five different perspectives provided a re leum, after he had led a series of processions lentless view of the hangman's scaffold. A message calling for the end of a devastating plague. The of control was thus transmitted through the city angel returned his sword to its sheath to signal fabric in a way quite similar to that envisioned for the end of the crisis.2 This same statue was the Panopticon invented by Jeremy Bentham in inadvertently an excellent lightning rod, and the late eighteenth century. was destroyed and replaced many times. The 178 INGERSOLL most significant restorations of the statue in the context of the construction of Piazza di Ponte occurred under Nicholas V in the 1450s and Paul III in 1534.3 The redesign of the bridge district was con temporary with alterations made to Castel Sant'Angelo. Nicholas V, early in his papacy, ordered the construction of a set of square gate towers on the bridge and the three round bas tions on the outer walls of the castle. After the bridge collapsed in 1450, and over two hundred pilgrims lost their lives, he began planning the enlargement of Piazza di Ponte. As an expiatory gesture, he sponsored the addition of twin oc tagonal votive chapels, seen in the Hartmann Schedel view of 1493 (fig. 3), and ordered the clearing of various jerry-rigged wooden struc tures from the bridge. With the local landown ers, he initiated a process of eminent domain, which eventually came to be known in the city's planning legislation as the gettito. Buildings could now be condemned for the purpose of widening the piazza, and property owners were Piazza di Ponte was widened and the embank Figure 3. Hartmann Schedel, either taxed or credited according to an assess ment restored.5 view of the Vatican Borgo 4 ment of their frontage. In 1500 Alexander VI initiated the first sven- and Ponte Sant'Angelo, from The next significant alteration to the bridge tramenti (disembowelments) of post-antique the Liber Chronicarum and its area occurred under Alexander VI Borgia, Rome, with the demolitions for the new straight [Nuremberg Chronicle], 1493. who by 1495 had refortified Castel Sant'Angelo street of Via Alessandrina (later known as the and replaced the square bridgetowers with a Borgo Nuovo and replaced in the late 1930s by round gun tower, set back from the structure of Via della Conciliazione), which ran axially from the bridge and placed slightly off axis. A new, the new gate of the castle to the portal of the classically inspired gate to the Borgo was built as Vatican Palace. Large-scale demolitions on the the terminus of the future Via Alessandrina, other side of the river, which were much more built for the Jubilee of 1500. Other new features politically sensitive, began in 1508 with Julius included polygonal additions to the outer bas II, whose projects included the new straight tions, a restoration of the passetto, the escape street of Via Giulia and the widening of Via route between the Vatican Palace and the castle de' Banchi, the street on axis with the bridge. that ran along the top of the Leonine walls, and For the latter renewal, the church of San Celso, new additions and decorations to the apart which had an open portico that faced Piazza di ments in the upper part of the fortress. Accord Ponte, was demolished and replanned with a ing to the diaries of Johannes Burchardus, papal new orientation to Via de' Banchi. Other build master of ceremonies, in the year 1500 part of ings on the north side of this street were also ROME 179 strongest influence of all the foreign commu nities on the financial and cultural affairs of the city. The presence of over thirty banks, or banchi, in the area, gave it its name. At the time of the construction of Via Giulia, the Flor entines were granted permission to construct their national church, but plans for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini did not surface until the next decade, under the papacy of a Flor entine, Leo X Medici. Though the construc tion of the church dragged on for over a century, and the facade was not in place until 1734, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini was from its inception an important urban goal and symbol of Florentine presence.7 Via Paola, one of the three axes of the Ponte trident, uses it as a focal terminus (fig. 4). Among the Florentine residents of the Banchi district was the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who had a prominent role in the design of the area. His career as an urbanist began in 1516 under Leo X, assisting Raphael with the planning of Via Leonina, one of the trident prongs leading from Piaz za del Popolo. In 1520 he succeeded Jacopo Sansovino as architect of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and later, in 1535-42, he built his own palace next to the church. Sangallo was thus committed to this area as a Florentine, a designer, and a property owner.8 Figure 4. Axial view on torn down. At the terminus of Via de' Banchi, Before the addition of the new streets to Via Paola to San Julius placed the papal mint, or Zecca. These Piazza di Ponte, the connections to Via Giulia Giovanni dei Fiorentini. changes have been charted in detail in Hubertus were narrow capillary vicoli, as narrow as 2.5 Gunther's maps reconstructing this area of Pi meters wide. Giinther has clarified in his stu azza di Ponte before and after the time of Paul dy of the gettito tax records and in the related Ill's interventions.6 drawing by Sangallo from the Uffizi that in A significant factor in the development of the 1524 the planning of this area included Sangallo's district around the bridge was its distinctive concave triumphal facade for the Zecca, the ethnic composition.