of his fame, Michelangelo was offered the opportunity to build a monumental civic plaza for a major city as well as to reestablish the grandeur of Rome. Michelangelo's first designs for remodeling the square date to 1534. From 1534 to 1538 Michelangelo completely redesigned the square, drawing every detail and making the Capitoline no longer turn towards the Roman Forum but towards the St. Peter's Basilica, which represented the new political center of the city. In 1546, Michelangelo produced the oval design for the piazza that included complex spiraling pavement with a twelve-pointed star at its centre. Michelangelo provided fronts to the official buildings of Rome's civic government, the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Palazzo Senatorio, and Palazzo Nuovo. Michelangelo designed a new façade for the dilapidated Palazzo dei Conservatori and he designed the Palazzo Nuovo to be a mirror complement, thereby providing balance and coherence to the ensemble of existing structures. The construction two of these buildings were carried out after his death under the supervision of Tommaso dei Cavalieri. The work went so slowly that Michelangelo could only see the completion of the double staircase which served as the new access to the Palazzo Senatorio, with the positioning of the two statues depicting the two river gods of the “Tiber” and the "Nile.” The façade and the top of the tower was still incomplete, while the Palazzo Nuovo had not started. Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius The Equestrian statue of emperor Marcus Aurelius in a gilded bronze statue, previously located in Piazza San Giovanni (where the Lateran Obelisk is now). Michelangelo positioned the statue to stand in the center of the square set in a paved oval field. The original statue, after restoration, is now kept in the Capitoline Museums, while a copy of it has been placed in the square. Pope Paul III commissioned Michelangelo to provide a setting for the statue and to bring order to an irregular hilltop already encumbered by two crumbling medieval buildings set at an acute angle to one another. Capitoline Museums The Capitoline Museums (Italian: Musei Capitolini) are a group of art and archaeological museums in the Piazza del Campidoglio. They include the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Palazzo Senatorio, and Palazzo Nuovo. The three palazzi are now home to the Capitoline Museums. The Palazzo Senatorio and Palazzo dei Conservatori form an 80° angle, on which he aligned the new façades, to expand the perspective