The 1st century Roman bronze Pigna ("pinecone") gives the name Cortile della Pigna to the highest terrace; it was a Roman fountain. 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 honor the Cortile della Pigna, linking the Vatican and the Palazzo del Belvedere. There it stands today under Pirro Ligorio's vast niche at the far end. The Courtyard was incomplete when Bramante died in 1514. It was finished by Pirro Ligorio for Pius IV in 1562-1565. Pirro took the great open-headed exedra at the center of Bramante's Belvedere and added a third storey, enclosing the central space with a vast half-dome to form the largest niche that had been erected since Antiquity--the nicchione visible today from several elevated outlooks around Rome. He completed his structure with an uppermost loggia that repeated the hemicycle of the niche and took its cue from scholarly reconstructions of the Roman temple complex dedicated to Fortun
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The 1st century Roman bronze Pigna ("pinecone") gives the name Cortile della Pigna to the highest terrace; it was a Roman fountain. 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 honor the Cortile della Pigna, linking the Vatican and the Palazzo del Belvedere. There it stands today under Pirro Ligorio's vast niche at the far end. The Courtyard was incomplete when Bramante died in 1514. It was finished by Pirro Ligorio for Pius IV in 1562-1565. Pirro took the great open-headed exedra at the center of Bramante's Belvedere and added a third storey, enclosing the central space with a vast half-dome to form the largest niche that had been erected since Antiquity--the nicchione visible today from several elevated outlooks around Rome. He completed his structure with an uppermost loggia that repeated the hemicycle of the niche and took its cue from scholarly reconstructions of the Roman temple complex dedicated to Fortun
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