One month in advance the restoration of the facade of the Palazzo Senatorio, on the Capitol hill, has been finished. Let's then briefly retrace the story of this important palace, the seat of the civic administration of the city since the twelfth century. In 196 B.C. a temple dedicated to Jupiter Veiovis, was built on this site by L. Furio Purpurione after the battle of Cremona against the Gauls. The only remains of this early edifice visible today are first-century B.C. reconstruction. It is possible to visit to these remains by asking to the guards (Vigili Urbani) at the desk at the top of the flight of stairs that climbs the building from Via San Pietro in Carcere. You may be lucky! Out of respect for this temple the Romans built the Tabularium around it (78 B.C.). 

The Tabularium (where the laws and the official documents, the tabulae, were kept) forms a corner following the perimetral walls of the Temple to Jove. In the Middle Ages this construction was transformed in to a fortress occupied by the Corsi family. 

When the Free Comune of Rome was established in 1143 the palace became the seat of the Senators and Magistracy of the civic government. We don't know much about the original Palazzo Senatorio. From the antique maps of Rome it can be imagined as in the picture.

(1299 under the Papacy of Boniface VIII who added the six arched loggia). The entrance to the palace was from the square by two ramps. The one visible in the background led to a terrace where there was an ancient sculptural group of a lion attacking a horse which gave the place its name the Luogo del Leone (Site of the Lion). Public executions sometimes took place here. Indeed it was here that Cola di Rienzo was torn to pieces by an angry mob in 1354. 

A monument to him can be found beside the Cordonata which leads to the Piazza del Campidoglio from Piazza dell'Aracoeli. The other ramp led under an arch to the Senator's room and then on up to the Council chambers. In one of these rooms in 1341 the poet Petrarch was crowned with a laurel wreath, the first poet laureate in Rome since the days of the Empire. Historians often mark the beginning of the Italian Renaissance from this momentous event. 

Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the palace was transformed by the addition of towers. In 1520 the loggia that can be seen in the next picutre was constructed:

During the papacy of Paul III Michelangelo was commissioned to transform the entire square and remodel the facade of the palace. Only the impressive square and the double flight of stairs before the facade were realized according to Michelangelo's original project (1550-52). The existing facade is the work of Giacomo della Porta and Girolamo Rainaldi (1578-82) but retains Michelangelo's idea of masking the medieval towers still visible in the picture above and in the next one (where the front of the Palace starts looking like what we can see today - after Michelangelo's renovations) 

Inside the palace the second and third floors were transformed into one big hall in place of the two medieval rooms. In 1849 the Constitutional Assembly of the Roman Republic, the first step towards the Union of Italian States, took place here. 

From 1870, when Rome became the capital of Italy, until the present day this hall has been the place where the City Council meet, thus continuing a tradition which dates back as far as the twelfth century at least.