pigna

Pigna is the name of rione IX of Rome. The name means "pine cone" in Italian, and the symbol for the rione is the colossal bronze pine cone, the Pigna, which once decorated a fountain in Ancient Rome next to a vast Temple of Isis. There water flowed copiously from the top of the pinecone. The Pigna was moved first to the old basilica of St. Peter's, where Dante saw it and employed it in the Commedia as asimile for the giant proportions of the face of Nimrod.^[1] In the 15th century it was moved to its current location, the upper end of Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere, which is now usually called in its honour the Cortile della Pigna, linking the Vaticanand the Palazzo del Belvedere. There it stands today underPirro Ligorio's vast niche at the far end, flanked by a pair of Roman bronze peacocks brought from Hadrian's mausoleum, the Castel Sant'Angelo.

The rione is centrally located in the Campus Martius area of ancient Rome. It is roughly square-shaped, extending from the Pantheon on its northwest corner to the Piazza Venezia on the southeast. This relatively small area contains numerous churches and palazzi.