The Rocca Pia is a fifteenth-century fortress in the heart of Tivoli. Pope Pius II Piccolomini had it built in July 1461, during his first visit to the town, to secure the loyalty of a Tivoli torn by the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines and between the descendants of the Colonna and the Orsini, forced at that time to give up its hopes of communal independence.
What to see
The design was probably entrusted to the architects Niccolò and Varrone, pupils of Filarete. The fortress rose just outside the town and its walls, in a commanding position, to watch over the approaches and the via Tiburtina and prevent new internal unrest; to the north the remains of the Roman amphitheatre known as Bleso's were razed so that they could not shelter enemies. The building, in local tuff, has four round towers of different sizes joined by high walls around a courtyard: the largest, facing outwards, is more than thirty-six metres high and contains six rooms one above the other, the second has five, the two smaller ones, towards the town, eighteen metres high, three each. Walls and towers stand on a high sloping base and are crowned by corbelled arches; the towers keep their original Guelph crenellations, and on the east side you can still see, walled up, the opening for the drawbridge.
On the portal, bearing the Piccolomini arms, a Latin inscription says that the fortress is welcome to the good, hateful to the wicked and hostile to the proud, by the will of Pius: a reminder of the submission of Virgil's «Tibur Superbum». Construction was completed under Sixtus IV or, more probably, Alexander VI, to whom the two smaller towers are due. Its still medieval forms, despite thickened walls and openings for firearms, soon made the fortress obsolete: after French and Austrian occupation it became a barracks and, from the Napoleonic period until 1960, a prison.
Visiting
After decades without a definite use, the Rocca has been open to the public since 15 December 2018 under the management of the Comune of Tivoli. Opening hours and visiting arrangements should be checked with the Comune.
Our editors' tip
The Rocca Pia under construction appears in Andrea Mantegna's frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi of the castle of San Giorgio in Mantua, painted between 1465 and 1474: it is worth looking for it if you pass through Mantua.
