Ettore Roesler Franz - Via di Magnanapoli - Torre delle Milizie - 1896

St. Catherine's Church and Tower of the Militia watercolor by Ettore Roesler Franz. The watercolor shows a typical Roman cropped silhouette in the clear sky. A strip of the supporting wall of the Villa Aldobrandini on the far left, the Torre del Grillo in the bottom of the Ascent of the same name, and the church that hooks still solidly, the adjoining monastery of the Dominicans. While the facade of Soria try to dissolve chasing boldness vertical, in pointless competition with the overlying Militia Tower.

On this illustrious architectural design a Barozza pulled by oxen slowly back towards Via Nazionale (or towards the Quirinale), and the troops of the new Italian shaman to turn right from that convent, transformed into the barracks. In the particular case, the 11th Infantry Regiment. Nor was this the only monastery in Rome, to be occupied by the military. The same fate had suffered S. Maria and S. Francesco a Ripa, S. Bernard, Traspontina, S. Lorenzo in Lucina, over the Turchine and the Philippines in Via Sforza, and other buildings in Via Panisperna and Piazza Aracoeli , in Via dei Penitentiary and Via dell'Olmata.

It should be added that even the Italian administration was certainly not the first to occupy, for civil and military requirements, buildings belonging to religious orders. An example angry still offers the convent to Magnanapoli, portrait usual by Roesler Franz in almost a pictorial message of farewell. In the early nineteenth century, during the French occupation, was positioned on the tobacco factory. The convent can indeed be regarded as the first true Roman factory like that, because just then beginning to appear the first cigars. In 1911, unfortunately, had to be completely liberated. There was preparing to sacrifice him, like so many other monuments in the name of "Roman". To put that in light of the ruins of Trajan's Market (1928).