Ponte Sant'Angelo
In Ponte Sant’Angelo once stood the Aelian Bridge—locally known as Pons Aelius—a Roman crossing completed in 134 AD by Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus) to span the Tiber toward his mausoleum, later Castel Sant’Angelo. Credited to Decriannus as architect, it was faced with travertine marble and carried five arches, with three described as Roman, approached by a ramp from the river. After the ruin of Nero’s Bridge, pilgrims were pushed here on their way to St Peter’s Basilica, and the name pons Sancti Petri (“bridge of Saint Peter”) stuck. By the sixth century, under Pope Gregory I, the bridge and castle took on the name Sant’Angelo, tied to a legend of an angel appearing on the castle roof to announce the end of the plague. Even Dante notes that during the Jubilee of 1300 the bridge had two separate lanes for the crowds. …
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