San Pietro in Montorio and the Tempietto Site Features

The Tempietto

A martyrium designed by Donato Bramante and completed around 1502 for the cloister of San Pietro in Montorio, commemorating the site traditionally regarded as the location of Saint Peter's crucifixion. Commissioned by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Considered a masterpiece of High Renaissance architecture for the harmony of its proportions.

The colonnade

Slender Tuscan columns — the Tuscan being a form of the Doric order, and the plainest classical vocabulary Bramante could have chosen for the job. Walk right round it; the building has no front.

The courtyard that was never built

Bramante planned concentric rings of colonnades around the Tempietto, radially aligned to its own columns. It was never executed. Standing in the cramped rectangular yard, you are inside the unbuilt two-thirds of the design.

Sebastiano del Piombo

The first chapel on the right contains his Flagellation and Transfiguration, painted 1516–24.

Bernini's Raimondi Chapel

Second on the left, dated 1640 and designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini — a chance to see him working small and early, in a church nobody visits for him.

Beatrice Cenci

Executed in 1599 for the murder of her abusive father. Although there is no grave marker, tradition has it that she is buried below the high altar; the original simple tombstone was lost in 1849 during the Unification of Italy.

The Amadist friars

In the fifteenth century the ruins were given to them — a reform branch of the Franciscans, founded by the Blessed Amadeus of Portugal.

The accessible route

Since December 2015 the Real Academia de España has provided a new itinerary through the complex, as a first step in eliminating architectural barriers. Unusually for a Roman monument, this is published.