CAMPIDOGLIO

Speranza

Although the documents pertaining to the activity of the CAMPIDOGLIO during the early Dark Ages are few and uncertain, they suffice to establish the importance of the part played by the famous hill in the whole history of ROMA in those turbulent and barbaric times.

VENERATED by the ROMANS as testimony of past grandeur, it remained to them a symbolic expression of civil power and the heart of the MUNICIPAL LIFE of ROMA.

When political passions agitated ROME, it was on the esplanade of the CAMPIDOGLIO or in the cloister of the Church of S. Maria in ARACOELI near by, that the people assembled in tumultous crowds to listen to the tribune's harangue.

The FASCINATION exercised by the glorious traditions of the hill outlived the MATERIAL destruction of its monuments, and in fact the edifices destined to its adornment in those times were all pre-eminently representative of power and dominion.