Hauntings in Rome: Beatrice Cenci

In 1599, Beatrice Cenci was the beautiful 17-year-old daughter of Roman aristocrat Count Francesco Cenci. On Sept. 10, 1599, Beatrice was beheaded outside the Castle Sant' Angelo on the banks of the Tiber River for the murder of her father.

Count Francesco Cenci was 52, and by most accounts, a corrupt and violent man. He lived with Beatrice, his youngest daughter, his second wife, Lucrezia Petroni and two boys, Giacomo and Bernardo in La Rocca, a castle standing high above the Roman streets. It was in La Rocca where Francesco brutalized his wife and daughter, and if the rumors were true, sexually abused them as well. Cenci was no stranger to trouble. He had a bad reputation around Rome and had many times escaped consequence with his nobility status.

In order to escape Francesco, Lucrezia and Beatrice Cenci helped organize a plot to kill him. In 1598, two men, including one who had become Beatrice's lover, held down Francesco, then stabbed him in his eye and throat. The next time anyone saw the Count, his dead body was already cold, lying 40 feet below in the warren beneath the La Rocca. When the body was being examined, questions about his death were raised, and witnessing priests suspected that the wounds to his head were not caused by his fall but rather from the blow of a sharp object.

Indeed, the Count had been hit in the head with a sharp object. The pursuing investigation concluded that before Count Cenci went to sleep the night prior, he was drugged by his wife, Lucrezia. But the drug wasn't strong enough. While in bed, two men broke in and Francesco Cenci awoke. One of the men held him down while the other delivered the fatal blow, an iron spike driven into the side of his head with a hammer. His body was then tossed over the balcony to make his death seem an accident. One of the men was Beatrice's lover, Olimpio Calvetti, who managed the castle. The other was a hired hitman, Marzio Catalano. But these two men were only instruments themselves in the murder of Francesco Cenci. Behind the plot to kill the Count was the Count's own family, namely his wife Lucrezia, his daughter Beatrice, and his oldest son, Giacomo. Beatrice never confessed to any part of the murder plot, claiming she had no motive in killing her father. The alleged sexual abuse could never be proven, hence neither could Beatrice's motive. But Giacomo's confession helped build a case against his sister, and as far as Roman law was concerned, Beatrice was as guilty as sin. As a result of the murder, Beatrice and Lucrezia may have escaped the cruel hand of Francesco, but they couldn't escape the cold hand of Roman justice.

Nearly a year later, after both Olimpio Calvetti and Marzio Catalano had died cruel deaths (the former had his head cut off by a bounty hunter and the latter was tortured to death in the Tordinona Prison in Rome) the Cenci family's execution sentences were carried out. The oldest son, Giacomo had his head smashed with a sledge hammer, and his body was quartered. Both Lucrezia and Beatrice Cenci were beheaded in front of a streetful of onlookers. The only Cenci spared was Beatrice's youngest brother, as he was thought to have been too young to have taken part in the killing. He was made to witness the executions just the same, and imprisoned thereafter.

The body of Beatrice Cenci was interred in the San Pietro Church in Montorio. But centuries later, Napoleon's armies smashed in her tomb, scattering her remains and played with her skull. Her remains were never retrieved and her physical body has since not rested in peace. It is said that in present day Rome, on the night between September 10th and 11th, Beatrice Cenci again appears where she was executed, on the bridge that leads to Sant Angelo's Castle, carrying her severed head in her hands.

Sources:
"Screaming in the Castle" by Charles Nicholl. London Book Review.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n13/nich02_.html

Virtual Roma
http://it.geocities.com/mp_pollett/roma-c19.htm