Via Giulia is a historical road, about one kilometre long, in Rome. In the Middle Ages Via Giulia was called “Magistralis” because it was deemed a main road, despite it being winding and muddy. Sixtus IV della Rovere, during the city’s reorganization, restructured it in 1478 naming it “Mercatoria” because it linked the financial area (Piazza di Ponte Sant’Angelo) with the markets of Campo de’ Fiori and Piazza Navona. But it was with Pope Julius II, who was also from the Della Rovere family, and Bramante, who was entrusted with the project in 1508, that it became Via Julia, in honour of the pope, although it was also called Via Recta as it was the longest straight road in Rome.
The road was, and still is, lined with the palaces of noble families of bankers and patrons: Sacchetti, Ricci, Chigi, Medici and Clarelli. It was joined to the Renella side of the Tiber by Ponte Sisto, a Roman bridge that was re-erected by Sixtus IV for the Jubilee of 1475, modified in 1870 and finally restored to its 15th-century look for the Jubilee of 2000.
Near the bridge, the impressive Palazzo Farnese, in whose construction Michelangelo was involved, overlooks the road with its rear façade, porch, garden visible through the gate and a little overpass with ivy that hangs down like a tent ‒ a romantic background with many images of Rome. When designing Palazzo Farnese Michelangelo proposed a bridge over the Tiber that would join the Palazzo’s façade on Via Giulia to Villa Chigi, later called Farnesina, and the current botanical gardens on the opposite bank of the river. Of this project all that remains is the terrace that hangs over Via Giulia and the overpass that was built in 1603 connecting Palazzo Farnese with the church of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte.
At the end of Via Giulia on the Via dei Pettinari side was the Acqua Paola wall fountain, built in 1613 at the end of the Paul V Borghese aqueduct, which brought water from Bracciano to the districts on the left bank of the river. At the other end, in the Ponte district, the street was, and still is, closed by the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, begun in 1519 but finished about a century later by the Florentine community that lived and operated in this area during the Renaissance. For a long time Via Giulia was a point of reference for rich bankers and wealthy merchants from Tuscany, especially during the pontificates of Leo X and Clement VII.