Carceri Nuove

The prison was built between 1652 and 1655 for Innocent X by Antonio Del Grande, to a detailed programme by Virgilio Spada, replacing Tor di Nona in Ponte, Corte Savella in Regola and the Borgo prison. Innocent X's stated motive was formed when, as Auditor of the Sacra Rota, he saw conditions at Tor di Nona. Before it opened it was used during the plague of 1656 as a stufa where people who had finished quarantine at San Pancrazio and Sant'Eusebio were washed. Prisoners were attended by the archconfraternities of San Giovanni della Pigna, the Assunta al Gesù and San Girolamo della Carità. Until Leo XII there were rooms for clergy, who were afterwards held in Castel Sant'Angelo. A ground-floor kitchen was built in 1824 and the women's prison extended to the second floor; in 1842 the prison held 600 men and 80 women. From 1931 it housed the Centro di studi penitenziari and the Museo Criminologico. It stayed in service until Regina Coeli was built in the early twentieth century.