The Via Giulia is a street of historical and architectural importance in Rome, Italy, which runs along the left (east) bank of the Tiber from Piazza San Vincenzo Pallotti, near Ponte Sisto, to Piazza dell'Oro. It is about 1 kilometre long and connects the Regola and Ponte Rioni.
The road's design was commissioned in 1508 to Donato Bramante by Pope Julius II (), of the powerful della Rovere family, and was one of the first important urban planning projects in papal Rome during the Renaissance.
The road, named after its patron, had been also called () because of its importance, and () because of its layout.
The project had three aims: the creation of a major roadway inserted in a new system of streets superimposed on the maze of alleys of medieval Rome; the construction of a large avenue surrounded by sumptuous buildings to testify to the renewed grandeur of the Catholic Church; and finally, the foundation of a new administrative and banking centre near the Vatican, the seat of the popes, and far from the traditional city centre on the Capitoline Hill, dominated by the Roman baronial families opposed to the pontiffs.
Despite the interruption of the project due to the pax romana of 1511 and the death of the pope two years later, the new road immediately became one of the main centres of the Renaissance in Rome. Many palaces and churches were built by the most important architects of the time, such as Raffaello Sanzio and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who often chose to move into the street. Several noble families joined them, while European nations and Italian city-states chose to build their churches in the street or in the immediate vicinity.
In the Baroque period the building activity, directed by the most important architects of the time such as Francesco Borromini, Carlo Maderno and Giacomo della Porta, continued unabated, while the street, favorite location of the Roman nobles, became the theatre of tournaments, parties and carnival parades. During this period the popes and private patrons continued to take care of the road by founding charitable institutions and providing the area with drinking water.
From the middle of the 18th century, the shift of the city centre towards the Campo Marzio plain caused the cessation of building activity and the abandonment of the road by the nobles. An artisan population with its workshops replaced these, and Via Giulia took on the solitary and solemn aspect that would have characterized it for two centuries. During the Fascist period some construction projects broke the unity of the road in its central section, and the damage has not yet been repaired. Despite this, Via Giulia remains one of Rome's richest roads in art and history, and after a two-century decline, from the 1950s onwards the road's fame was renewed to be one of the city's most prestigious locations.
History In Rome, since the early Middle Ages, while the political and representative heart of the city seemed to have remained on the Capitoline Hill, the area of the ancient developed into one of the most densely populated districts (abitato). The maze of narrow alleys was criss-crossed by three narrow thoroughfares: the (lit. "papal road"), inhabited by curial employees; the (lit. "pilgrims' road") artisan and business road; and the (lit. "straight road", a name common to many roads in medieval Rome). This was used above all by pilgrims coming from the north and was home to small businesses. The three roads converged to the north towards the Angels' Bridge, which was therefore the bottleneck of the city's traffic. As Dante Alighieri described in the Divine Comedy, in 1300 Pope Boniface VIII () ordered a two-way traffic system to be set up to avoid traffic jams or panic as a response to the dense crowds on Angels' Bridge.
After Pope Martin V () returned to Rome in 1420 at the end of the Western Schism, the influx of pilgrims increased significantly again, especially in the Jubilee years. On 29 December 1450, the last day of the Holy Year, a stampede broke out on the bridge that killed more than 300 people. As a result of the catastrophe, Pope Nicholas V (), the first Renaissance pope who systematically dealt with Roman town planning, ordered the Angels' Bridge to be cleared of stalls and shops; the first urban planning measures in the area were initiated, defining in his programme the abovementioned three streets as the city's main ones. Starting with Nicholas, the policy of the popes was to leave the control of the Capitoline Hill area to the Roman nobility, concentrating urban development on the Tiber bend and the Vatican, made important by the pilgrimage to Saint Peter and the jubilees.
In 1475, Pope Sixtus IV () ordered the Ponte Sisto, named after him, to be built across the Tiber in order to relieve the pilgrimage route across the Angels' Bridge and to connect the rioni of Regola and Trastevere. At the same time he ordered the restoration of Via Pelegrinorum and the area around the Campo de' Fiori. According to the chronicler Stefano Infessura, however, strategic reasons aside from reducing traffic were also important for these projects. Until then it had been very difficult for the pope to carry out urban interventions within the Aurelian Walls, mainly because of the power of the noble families of folk background, but Sixtus could use the revenues of the jubilee to carry out the works in the city. When the holy year was over, he changed the responsibilities of the Conservatori (the chief magistrates of Rome's commune), who until then had the power to curb papal initiatives in Rome, and reinforced the possibility of expropriating land and buildings for public utility. Aim of the pope was the reduction of the property income of the local nobility, and the redevelopment of the three main streets of the city.
The successors of Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII (); Alexander VI (); and Pius III (), continued the Sistine urban planning policy, often completing the works begun by Pope della Rovere. Among them, in 1497 Alexander VI ordered the widening of the Via Peregrinorum and the opening of the Porta Settimiana through the Aurelian Walls. The latter work was a precondition for the future construction of Via della Lungara on the right bank of the Tiber from Ponte Sisto to St. Peter's Basilica.
The project of Pope Julius II
In addition to reconstructing St. Peter's Basilica, Julius II implemented multiple projects in the framework of Rome's urban renewal (Renovatio Romae) in the Ponte, Parione, Sant'Eustachio and Colonna rioni, a task which was started forty years before by his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. One of the most important projects was the creation of two new straight streets on the left and right banks of the Tiber: the Via Giulia on the left bank, a new grand avenue through the most densely populated quarter of Rome, from the Ponte Sisto to the Florentine merchant quarter on the Tiber bend, and the Via della Lungara along the right bank, a straight road from the Porta Settimiana in Trastevere to the Hospital of Santo Spirito in the Borgo. Both roads–designed by the pope's favourite architect Donato Bramante– flanked the Tiber and were closely connected to it. The Lungara had the dual aim to relieve the pilgrimage route to Saint Peter and transport goods coming from the Via Aurelia and the Via Portuense roads towards the centre of the city. Moreover, the street, overlooking the river, was going to represent the place of the cultured and refined leisure time of the Roman upper class, who built there some of the most luxurious suburban residences in the city. The two streets, surrounded by palaces, including that of the pope's banker, Agostino Chigi, would have formed "a kind of city within the city, a garden city along the Tiber".
The main goal behind these plans was to superimpose to medieval Rome's disorderly building mesh a regular road network having the Tiber as focus; together with the new Via Alessandrina that Alexander VI opened in the Borgo and the Via dei Pettinari that connected the Trastevere on one bank and the Campidoglio on the other, the Lungara and Via Giulia created a quadrilateral network of modern roads in the city's chaotic web of narrow streets. In the original project Via Giulia was supposed to reach the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Borgo through the rebuilt Nero's Bridge.
This project had a secondary, celebrative goal to promote the Pontiff as the unifier of Italy and the renewer of Rome; in 1506, after the end of the plague, Julius overthrew the powerful Baglioni and Bentivoglio families, conquering their strongholds of Perugia and Bologna as testified in an inscription along the Via dei Banchi Nuovi.
Aside from serving as a means of communication and representation for the Church, the road was supposed to host the city's new layman's administrative centre. A drawing by Donato Bramante discovered by Luitpold Frommel in the Uffizi shows a new huge administrative complex, the Palazzo dei Tribunali. All the notaries and courts operating in Rome had to be centralised in this building: among them, the tribunal of the Conservatori, for centuries located on the Capitoline Hill and traditionally controlled by the Roman nobility. This decision would therefore put an end to the chaos caused by various jurisdictions subject to ecclesiastical and secular authority, putting the justice under the pope's control.
Bramante's sketch shows also a representative square (the Foro Iulio) opened along the new street and facing the Palazzo dei Tribunali and the old Cancelleria (today's Palazzo Sforza-Cesarini). The square was not far from the Apostolic Camera (the pope's treasury) in Palazzo Riario and the new Palazzo della Zecca (lit. "papal mint") erected by Bramante at the edge of Via dei Banchi Nuovi (also named Canale di Ponte). By this road lay the merchants' and bankers' houses and offices, like the Altoviti, Ghinucci, Acciaiuoli, Chigi and Fugger. Close economic ties with Tuscan bankers like Agostino Chigi were sought and promoted.
As a resulting consequence of the project, the area around the Vatican and Trastevere would have been enhanced at the detriment of the Capitoline Hill, symbol of the Roman nobility's power. The plan was thus intended to separate the papacy from the city's powerful noble families (the baroni), particularly the Orsini and Colonna families, who until then had been the Pontiff's most trusted allies, replacing them with a new organisation formed by Papal legates.
Around 1508 the executive phase of the project started: the pope ordered Bramante to start expropriating and demolishing properties in the densely populated Campo Marzio to create the new street.
Giorgio Vasari wrote:Giorgio Vasari: Vita di Donato Bramante – 1568
In August 1511 the life of Julius II was seriously threatened by an illness. Due to that, the feuding Orsini and Colonna families and the other Barons reached an agreement (known as the Pax Romana), in order to ask at the upcoming conclave the restoration of the commune authority and the abolition of various taxes. The pope's prompt recovery made the possibility of conclave fade away; Julius, under pressure from abroad, came to terms with the nobles, propagandizing the anti-papal pact as an agreement in his favour and revoking several decisions taken against the comune. Among these, he granted the Capitoline court jurisdiction over all cases between Roman citizens, except those pending before the Sacra Rota. This decision caused the interruption of the works for the new road and the Palazzo dei Tribunali, whose project was definitively abandoned when the pope died, while the planned square in front of it was forgotten. Apart from a few rusticated blocks between the Via del Gonfalone and the Vicolo del Cefalo, today nothing remains of the palazzo.
Via Giulia in the 16th century