Rocca Paolina

Pope Paul III ordered the Rocca Paolina raised on the site of the Baglioni family's houses in the burgh of Santa Giuliana, after the Baglioni had revolted against papal rule. Construction ran from 1540 to 1543 to a design attributed to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Alessandro Tomassoni da Terni; Sangallo had been engaged on two comparable works in the preceding years, the citadel of Ancona (1533) and Florence's Fortezza da Basso (1534–1537), and the three fortresses are counted among the earliest Italian-style bastioned fronts.

Around three hundred houses came down along with the whole burgh of Santa Giuliana, its churches and monasteries, among them the fifteenth-century church of Santa Maria dei Servi, remembered by contemporaries as the most beautiful in the city. Streets, towers and courtyards caught inside the new perimeter were not levelled but enclosed under massive vaults, becoming the fortress's underground level, and the ancient Etruscan gate known as Porta Marzia was built into the new brick ramparts, where it still stands.

Until 1861 the fortress stood as the visible symbol of papal rule over the once-free city. It was partly destroyed in the uprisings of 1848 and rebuilt in 1860 on the order of Pope Pius IX. After Italian unification reached Perugia in 1861, systematic demolition began and continued in stages into the final decades of the century, clearing all three of the fortress's original parts — the Palazzo Papale, the Corridore and the Tenaglia facing open country. Only the Palazzo Papale's ground was replaced with a new building, the present Palazzo della Provincia; the wider cleared site gave room for piazza Italia, via Masi, the Carducci gardens and viale Indipendenza.

The vaulted streets beneath the Palazzo Papale, known as via Bagliona, lay buried and forgotten for decades until they were cleared of rubble and restored between 1932 and 1965, opening the old medieval quarter as an underground passage. In 1983 a mechanised walkway of escalators was built through the fortress, linking the base of the Etruscan-Roman acropolis at piazza Partigiani to piazza Italia above. Listed as Italian national heritage, the site is now used for exhibitions and cultural events, and a bastion on via Marzia serves as an exhibition and museum space.