Posted on 2026.01.01
Michelangelo is famously said to have finished his frescoes on the barrel-vaulted
ceilings of the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back.
That's nothing. The entire chapel was started thanks to courtesans lying on theirs.
And doing so, they made Rome a renaissance capital.
Supply and Demand
Sex workers have always been part of Rome, but by the late medieval era a city census
showed nearly 14% of all citizens were in the business.
Rome is also base of operations for the pope, and the city had many comers-and-goers
through its gates: diplomats and clergy, kings and pilgrims. All of them with money, and
all of them far from home. For every one client a courtesan would accept, there would
be several more behind him willing to pay more if she took them instead.
These courtesans were skilled. They were smart. They were beautiful. They were
sexual artists.
They were an economic force within the city.
A city which was broke.
Draining the coffers
There were some sloppy dudes running around the Vatican during the fifteenth century.
The mid-century saw a series of crooked popes who cared only about spending church
money on their friends, families, and allies.
Popes had direct control over the city then, and skimming too many ducats into too
many money belts left nothing for the common good.
Needed bridges went unfinished, roads were too narrow for the growing population, and
ancient churches were falling apart. It was getting bad in the Eternal City.
Then, in 1471, along comes Pope Sixtus IV.
Other cities in Italy had more thoroughly embraced the renaissance and were running
laps around Rome. Sixtus, who was a patron of the arts as a cardinal, found the city he
inherited on his election to be embarrassing.
The pope needed money to make the place more beautiful. He had to raise it from the
people of Rome themselves.
Who in Rome had this kind of money?
Courtesans.
Pussy to the rescue
The cortigiana onesta – "honest women of the court" – were legalized and their
earnings taxed. The earnings of ladies and men in brothels were also taxed. And if a
member of the clergy had a professional companion? He had to pay a tax as well.
The tax (apparently called la pornè) 1 was wildly successful.
A new bridge across the Tiber River was built – the first since the collapse of the Roman
Empire. Sixtus reopened the Vatican Archives after decaying for years. A hospital for
sick orphans was opened, and a new chapel was built in the Vatican. At least 30
crumbling churches were refurbished, with one of them becoming the favoured church
of Roman sex workers each Sunday.
All of this was funded by the money of courtesans. The bridge, the archives, the hospital
for orphans – all of it.
The ecstasy and the ecstasy
Sixtus, or "Sisto" as he is named in Italian, wasn't the "fun pope" that legalization would
imply. They were just a means to an end. He was still the same genre of greedy, self-
aggrandizing, nepotistic pope that plagued the era.
He was fond of naming the things built with the courtesan tax after himself.
The bridge? It's the "Ponte Sisto" – the Sistine Bridge. It's still around today.
The chapel he built in the Vatican is also still around.
It's the Sistine Chapel.
Finished in 1481 and holding its first conclave in 1492, this famous room was funded,
designed, built, and decorated by the labour of the courtesans of Rome.
The famous frescoes by Michelangelo would come in 1508. He was commissioned by
Pope Julius II – Sixtus' nephew. The ceiling is a symbolic completion of the renaissance
renewal that began in Sixtus’ time.
Lasting legacy
With sex workers being essential enough to tax but not essential enough to be
recognized, the chapel continues to be named the Sistine Chapel and not the
Courtesan Chapel.
The chapel has held the election of many popes, including the twelve most recent. It’s
the most visited place on earth, with 5 million tourists. A sacred space of solemnity
where new popes are born exists entirely thanks to the economic powerhouse of the
pussy.
And that's beautiful.
Under the courtesan-funded transformation in the architecture and art in the city, Rome
went from a dumpy medieval city lagging behind other Italian states to becoming home
to some of the most famous renaissance works ever produced.
In other words, courtesans saved Rome.
Categories: History
Tags: courtesans, Rome,
1. Splendori e miserie delle cortigiane romane | Roma Felix
2. https://www.historyback.com/en/story/1001014439.html
3. Pope Sixtus IV And The Italian Renaissance
4. The History of the Sistine Chapel, Where Popes Are Elected – Seasia.co
5. Inside the Sistine Chapel, where a new Pope will be elected at the conclave
