Italian cities are full of visible monuments, but some of their most interesting architecture was designed for movement that ordinary people were not meant to see. Not all of them were “secret tunnels” in the popular sense, rather, they were raised corridors and internal staircases, prison passages and grated choir lofts, or protected routes sometimes built inside walls and palaces.
Their purpose varied from escape to security to religious enclosure, and it focused on allowing certain people to move and communicate without entering public space in the usual way. The most famous case is perhaps the Passetto di Borgo in Rome, the fortified elevated passage connecting the Vatican with Castel Sant’Angelo.
