Ponte Sant'Angelo, the bridge of ten angels facing the castle

Of all Rome’s bridges, this is the one I’d cross for its own sake, with no need to reach the other side. Ponte Sant’Angelo is nearly nineteen centuries old, lands you at the door of an imperial tomb turned fortress and carries ten Baroque angels that keep you company all the way over. Turismo Roma calls it the most fascinating of the Tiber’s seven iconic bridges, and I won’t argue.

What Ponte Sant’Angelo is, and where the name comes from

It’s the bridge that takes you from the old-town bank of the Tiber to the entrance of Castel Sant’Angelo. Hadrian had it built in AD 136, a year after starting his tomb, with one clear idea, that you should reach his mausoleum by crossing the river head on. That’s why it was first called the Pons Aelius, Ponte Elio in Italian, after the emperor’s family name.

The present name is borrowed. The castle became Sant’Angelo after the legend of the Archangel Michael, whom Pope Gregory the Great is said to have seen sheathing his sword above it in 590, and the bridge ended up with the same name. If you want the full story of the building in front of you, it’s in my guide to Castel Sant’Angelo.

Ten angels, and the two that aren’t here

What turns a Roman bridge into an open-air gallery arrived in the seventeenth century. Clement IX commissioned ten marble angels, each holding a symbol of the Passion, and Bernini designed the lot. The carving he left to his workshop, which is worth knowing before you start hunting for the master’s hand in every figure.

Because the master’s hand isn’t here. Bernini, by then around seventy, carved two of the angels himself, and Turismo Roma says they were judged too beautiful to leave out in the weather, so they stayed in his studio. In 1729 his heirs gave them to the basilica of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, where they still stand. On the bridge you’re looking at his workshop’s versions.

At the old-town end you’re also greeted by St Peter and St Paul, two statues that arrived before the angels, during an earlier makeover. I like to read the whole bridge as a procession, apostles at the gate and angels leading you on towards the castle.

Dante, a mule and Rome’s executioner

Few bridges carry this much history. In the Jubilee of 1300, the very first, so many pilgrims crossed here on their way to St Peter’s that traffic had to be split into two directions, and Dante wrote it into Canto XVIII of the Inferno. The Holy Year of 1450 turned to tragedy. An accident caused by the white mule carrying Nicholas V broke the parapets, and dozens were drowned in the river.

Between 1488 and 1534 the square and the bridge were used to display executed prisoners, which left Rome with a proverb claiming there were more severed heads on the parapets than melons at the market. Turismo Roma rounds it all off with a legend. Before dawn, they say, you might meet Mastro Titta, Rome’s most famous executioner, wrapped in his scarlet cloak and offering a pinch of tobacco to anyone passing.

How to cross it and actually see it

My advice is to start from the old-town bank with the castle ahead of you. That way you have the apostles at the entrance, angels on both sides and the castle’s bronze angel at the far end, which is the photo everyone’s after. Cross it the other way and you turn your back on the best view.

I’d stop at each angel without hurrying, because the bridge is short and over in no time if you don’t look. I’d cross at the very start or the very end of the day, when fewer people are standing about mid-span. And if you’re after a picture of the whole bridge with the castle behind, it works better from the riverbank than from on top.

Fitting it in with the castle and the Vatican

The bridge falls on the way for almost any plan round here. Cross it and you’re in the Borgo district, and from there, along Piazza Pia and Via della Conciliazione, you walk to St Peter’s Square. If you’re staying in Prati, it’s a stroll along the Lungotevere.

My favourite order is the afternoon one. The Museums and the basilica in the morning, the castle after lunch and the bridge on the way out, with low light on the river. If you like your days planned hour by hour, it’s all laid out in my two-day Vatican itinerary.