Regina Coeli (prison)

The construction was started by Pope Urban VIII in 1642, but his death stopped the works and the complex remained unfinished.

A new complex housing a prison for women, dubbed "Le Mantellate" was erected nearby on a place also formerly occupied by a Catholic convent.

In 1943, the Nazis led by Erich Priebke rounded up and imprisoned over 1,000 Roman Jews in the Regina Coeli prison.

[citation needed] Pankratius Pfeiffer, Superior General of the Salvatorians and "the Angel of Rome", is said to have visited the prisons of Regina Coeli and Via Tasso everyday during the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1943 and 1944, returning with a freed prisoner, since he acted as an intermediary between Pope Pius XII and the German authorities.

During the theft of the Santo Bambino of Aracoeli on 1 February 1994, inmates at the Regina Coeli prison wrote a petition to their anonymous "colleagues", asking for its return.