Rocca Paolina
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Transcript
The most startling part of Rocca Paolina is not what rises above ground, but what survives underneath. Pope Paul the Third ordered the fortress after crushing Perugia’s resistance during the Salt War of 1540. Building it required the demolition and incorporation of homes, towers and streets associated especially with the Baglioni quarter.
The fortress was a military installation, but also an unmistakable political message: papal sovereignty now sat physically on top of the defeated city. Much of it was dismantled in the nineteenth century as papal rule ended. Yet the buried streets remained. Walking through them today means moving inside the architecture of domination rather than merely looking at a monument to it.