 Given its history, I’m not sure this castle would qualify as a sacred site; but the View of Rome from its top terrace, just below the angel, would definitely inspire you. In my personal list of requirements for the sacredness of a place, the view plays an important role: it can be revealing, uplifting, transporting, dramatic, spectacular, or breathtaking. But whatever its quality, it will inevitably touch something in you.
That’s why I have included the Angel’s Castle in my photolog of sacred places. Once you go through its history—from its initial function as a mausoleum for the Roman emperor Hadrian, through the medieval transformation into a fortress where the popes would run for their lives from the nearby Vatican, to its present fame as one of the locales where Dan Brown has placed the action of his Angels and Demons—then you can open to the pulse of the place and feel how it affects you. I definitely felt something of the sacred quality standing on the top terrace, with the figure of the angel towering protectively above me, and the roofs of Rome, the dome of the Pantheon, the belfries of many dozens of churches, the Tiber, the bridges, and the Vatican all spread out before me. The history of Western civilization written in brick and stone.
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