The Piazza del Capidoglio, Rome

This drawing by Etienne Duperac (1568) shows Michelangelo's imaginative arrangement of the Piazza del Capidoglio on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The ramp known as the Cordonata is visible in the foreground. Michelangelo designed an egg-shaped pattern of paving in order to harmonise the trapezoid space created by the facades of the palaces which do not squarely face each other. The pattern appears to be oval but is in fact narrower at one end than the other. The pattern also solved the problem of the sloping gradient on this part of the Capitoline Hill. The patterned paving is flat and is approached by steps which are higher on one side than the other in order to eliminate the gradient.

The palace at the far end of the square is the Palazzo Senatorio. On the left is the Palazzo Nuovo and on the right the Palazzo dei Conservatori. The statue at the centre of the pattern is the bronze equestrian figure of Marcus Aurelius.

Michelangelo reconciled Christian renaissance Rome with its ancient pagan past by creating a visual axis from the centre of the two-winged staircase on the facade of the Palazzo Senatori via the equestrian statue and the Cordonata ramp to Saint Peters Square. In ancient Rome the public buildings on the Capitoline, previously a place of pagan worship, had been designed along a different visual axis which lead to the Forum. 

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