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The Castel Sant'Angelo - Rome, Italy - Patrons' Edition
🕑 Added 2024-03-05 05:15:49 +0000 UTCWhen I first started working on this map, I didn't know much about the Castel Sant'Angelo. I knew that it was in Rome and once belonged to the pope, but I wasn't aware that it was originally built as the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. When I read that, I had to pause for a second and process what I had just learned. So...wait, the pope used to live in a gay man's tomb? Huh. That was my fun fact for the day and now it's yours.
That also helps to explain why this place is so unusual. The long, circular ramp at the entrance and the long stairway up the center aren't things you'd see in many castles, but they were a part of the original mausoleum and are still there after 1900 years of renovations.
There's an alternate version of this map I want to make for patrons and it should only take a day. I think there are a lot of things this map could be used for if it was just a bit less of a castle, so I'm going to remove the outer walls and leave the keep in the center. At that point, it could be a temple, a monastery, a small village, an unusual wizard's tower, etc. I think you'll see what I mean.
Well, I'm gonna get to work on that and I should have it for you tomorrow. In the meantime, let me know what you think of the Castel Sant'Angelo. And if you've got any questions about the place, feel free to ask. It is genuinely a strange castle, it's not just you. I promise.
Download from Google Drive here (under NEWEST PATRON CONTENT).
Comments
Silas
So probably once another entranceway, or just a little spot for the pope to go look out at whoever was standing in the courtyard.
Milby's Maps
The stairs lead down toward the window. For the future, the way to tell is that the stairs cast their shadows downwards. I'm not sure what the purpose of it was, but there's just a window at the end. I believe it's the window just above and to the left of the cistern in this photo: https://mikestravelguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Courtyard-of-Alexander-VI-Castel-Sant-Angelo-Rome-Italy-800x507.jpg Having looked at the floor plans of a lot of castles, I can tell you that the older ones which have undergone a lot of renovations often have odd things like this. And the Castel Sant'Angelo has been around in some form or another for 1900 years, so the people of Rome have had a lot of time to mess around with it.
Silas
This is amazing, the fact that a papal elevator was a thing just amuses the hell out of me. One question, the weird corridor/staircase connected to room 10, do we have a direction up/down for the staircase and any theory as to what it was there for?
