Ponte Sant’Angelo, originally the Aelian Bridge or Pons Aelius, is a Roman bridge in Rome, Italy, completed in 134 AD by Roman Emperor Hadrian, to span the Tiber from the city centre to his newly constructed mausoleum, now the towering Castel Sant’Angelo.
Starting with the early Middle Ages, the original name was forgotten: after the ruin of Nero’s Bridge, pilgrims were forced to use this bridge to reach St Peter’s Basilica, hence it was known also with the name of “bridge of Saint Peter”. In the sixth century, under Pope Gregory I, both the castle and the bridge took on the name Sant’Angelo, explained by a legend that an angel appeared on the roof of the castle to announce the end of the plague. Dante writes in his Divine Comedy that during the jubilee of 1300, due to the large number of pilgrims going and coming from Saint Peter, two separate lanes were arranged on the bridge. During the 1450 jubilee, balustrades of the bridge collapsed, due to the great crowds of the pilgrims, and many drowned in the river. In response, some houses at the head of the bridge as well as a Roman triumphal arch were pulled down in order to widen the route for pilgrims.
