Castel Sant'Angelo
Mausoleum in Rome, ItalyWikipedia
32
MENTIONS
28
EPISODES
24
PODCASTS
Search complete. 32 mentions across 28 episodes found for "Castel Sant'Angelo".
Oct 27, 2026
Tru LudwigGUEST
To me, this feels like
Ann ShaferHOST
I mean, even the Castel Sant'Angelo is sort of prison-like.
Tru LudwigGUEST
Of course it is.
Tru LudwigGUEST
The fort.
speaker_0NARRATOR
At the gates of Rome, he found the city locked tightly.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Queen Algertrude had ordered a staunch defense, but it didn't take long for the defenders to be overwhelmed and Bavarian soldiers were soon streaming through the streets of Rome, where They quickly freed Pope Formosus from the Castel San Angelo.
speaker_0NARRATOR
On the 22nd of February 896, King Arnav was crowned as Emperor in the Church of St. Peter, as Pope Formosus bestowed on him the title of Augustus.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Once the crown had comfortably settled on his head, his sights turned to the small city of Spoleto, just north of Rome, where the young Lambert and his mother were holed up.
Nick HolmesHOST
It was dominated by the French and Normans, and the principal reason for this lay with the German Emperor Henry IV's war with the papacy.
Nick HolmesHOST
As I described in episode 137, in 1095, when Urban II made his famous speech at Clermont, Henry IV was backing a rival pope called Clement III, who controlled the fortress, the Castel San Angelo, in Rome.
Nick HolmesHOST
So, the city of Rome itself was divided between two rival popes, and this conflict between the pope and the German emperor continued.
Nick HolmesHOST
until the Concordat of Worms in 1122, when the Pope won and the German Emperor, who was then Henry V, backed down and allowed him to appoint bishops.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
Tensions are high in the city following the ousting of French troops after the fall of the short-lived Roman Republic.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
Many loyalists were swept up and imprisoned in the imposing Castel San Angelo.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
Built in 139 AD, the fortress's thick stone foundation endured through the centuries, becoming a military stronghold for the Catholic Church.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
By the year 1800, Castel San Angelo had already seen many prisoners locked away in its cells, including the famous sculptor Cellini.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
Many more suffered their final fate at the executioner's grounds on the rooftop terrace.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
With such a sensational history, it is fitting that the Castel San Angelo estate prison is the setting for Puccini's thriller of an opera, Tosca.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
In what is possibly the most shocking 24 hours in opera history, audiences are subjected to an edge-of-your-seat psychological rollercoaster involving fugitives and subterfuge, love and betrayal, torture and death, and one of opera's best plot twists ever.
Jane PotterNARRATOR
Puccini composed Tosca after watching a performance of French playwright Victorien Sardouze La Tosca.
Katie CharlwoodHOST
That's how this worked.
Katie CharlwoodHOST
So they had arranged to meet sort of between the Castel Sant'Angelo bridge and the Palazzo Accio bridge.
Katie CharlwoodHOST
Now, Maria Christina and her friends, like, they waited for, like, half an hour.
Katie CharlwoodHOST
So they're just over 30 minutes, they're waiting.
speaker_0NARRATOR
And clearly, in those days, that meant one commissioned a spectacular span to match one's monumental mausoleum.
speaker_21SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Rome's brooding Castel D'Angelo, the real thing with its grisly history.
speaker_21SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And Signor Proietti's toothpick version.
speaker_0NARRATOR
In the late 1600s, Hadrian's Bridge was adorned with 10 life-sized angels.
RicardoHOST
But Scarpia never left.
RicardoHOST
The last words Tosca utters at the top of il palazzo, um, Castel Sant'Angelo, excuse me, at the top of the Castel Sant'Angelo, is going to be, "Oh, Scarpia, avanti a Dio.
RicardoHOST
Scarpia, we'll see each other in front of God." Because as of now, Scarpia has won.
RicardoHOST
Scarpia has decided what is going to happen every minute in Tosca.
Tru LudwigGUEST
That's a big darn dealio, and that's where we start getting these kinds of very huge, very clear ...
Tru LudwigGUEST
Well, they're not even veduta, because they're there, but they're also a catalog of importance, right? So here, we have a view of the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, now called the Castel Sant'Angelo, from the rear.
Tru LudwigGUEST
And, uh, what is it? Oh, my God, that's a lot of cannonballs.
Tru LudwigGUEST
What do you see, Ann?
Ann ShaferHOST
Well, the first thing I notice is the letter B on the, on the, I don't know, pair, whatever that piece of the Castel Sant'Angelo is.
Ann ShaferHOST
But that has made me look at the address that has ...
Ann ShaferHOST
It's all of these, uh-
Tru LudwigGUEST
Well, wow, look at that set of clouds.
Richard BoyleHOST
Several apparitions of St. Michael then took place in Italy.
Richard BoyleHOST
In 525 on Mount Gargano, in 590 in Rome to Pope St. Gregory the Great in the place called ever since the Castel Sant'Angelo, and in France on October 16th, 708, there occurred the first of three apparitions of the Archangel St. Michael to the Bishop of Avranches, St. Albert.
Richard BoyleHOST
On October 16th, 709, this saint consecrated to the archangel the church, which was to become in the 14th century the marvelous Basilica of Mont Saint-Michel.
Richard BoyleHOST
These events took place during the reign of Childebert III, grandson of the Merovingian Clovis II, which shows that already, under the first dynasty of the kings of France, the Catholic faith shone brightly in the provinces of Amorica and Neustria.
John BradshawHOST
There's the Arch of Septimius Severus, emperor of Rome from 193 to 211.
John BradshawHOST
The Castel Sant'Angelo was commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian, who became emperor in 117 AD.
John BradshawHOST
Glorious times, larger than life figures.
John BradshawHOST
One of the emperors who doesn't get talked about a lot is a man whose name is usually only mentioned for the darkest of reasons, the persecution of Christians, persecution so bad it's mentioned in the Bible, and he's the only emperor who resigned from being emperor.
18 more episodes mention Castel Sant'Angelo.
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