Postcards from Rome: Michelangelo Slept Here. Or Was It Dante?

Michelangelo’s house is gone. The façade of one of the last homes he owned is now preserved as the front of a water storage building on Via Garibaldi. That’s the only existing building that we know he slept in. However, knowledge can be overrated in Rome. Everyone wants to claim that Michelangelo – or Raphael, Pope Leo X, or Goethe – lived in their building. And, frankly, they have a better chance at being right than most.

Michelangelo’s House © Angela Nickerson

I was once in a taxi driving along the Tiber River. We passed a beautiful old building on a prominent corner. “That was Michelangelo’s house, Macel de’ Corvi,” the taxi driver said. I didn’t say anything, but in my research and reading, I’d found that Macel de’ Corvi – given to Michelangelo as partial payment for Pope Julius II’s tomb – had been torn down in the 1800’s, and its façade is the one that graces a water tower. However, I wasn’t about to disabuse my friendly taxi driver, so I decided to do a little more research.

The building my taxi driver was pointing to – and it is very cool – is now a restaurant, Hostaria dell’Orso (Via dei Soldati 25c). Chef Gualtiero Marchesi has created an elegant and refined restaurant earning a 3-star Michelin rating.

I was out for my evening walk, and the bouncer was out front. In broken English/Italian and a smattering of French, I explained my project and asked him if Michelangelo had lived there. “No,” he explained. But the building had been built in the Middle Ages and had been an inn for a long time.

Inn Where Dante Stayed © Angela Nickerson

So who has stayed there? Dante and Goethe, amongst others. Michelangelo? No. But the mystique remains.

Roman Rule of the Day

Tipping is unnecessary – and unexpected – in Roman taxis. However, taxi drivers appreciate exact change, and I often simply round up to the nearest Euro when making change.