The Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, or the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, has a grandiose appearance and an equally impressive history. The cylindrical mausoleum, built at the dawn of Christianity on the banks of the Tiber, has in the course of its long life been the final resting place of the Roman emperor, the residence of the pontiffs, a fort, then a dungeon, and later a museum and treasury. It is one of the few architectural monuments of the Roman Empire that have survived to this day.
The mausoleum was once the burial place of Emperor Hadrian and his family, then the residence of the Pope, an impregnable castle where the Vatican treasury was kept and a prison for especially dangerous state criminals, whose prisoners included Benvenuto Cellini, Count Cagliostro, Giordano Bruno.
