Rome's city hall thrusts its foundations deep into the Tabularium, the ancient city's hall of records. During the Middle Ages it looked like the medieval town halls you see in Tuscan hill towns, part fortress and part assembly hall. The building was entirely rebuilt in the 1500s as part of Michelangelo's revamping of the Campidoglio for Pope Paul III; the master's design was adapted by later architects, who wisely left the front staircase as the focus of the facade. The ancient statue of Minerva in the niche at the center was opportunely renamed the Goddess Rome, and the river gods (the River Tigris remodeled to symbolize the Tiber, right, and the Nile, left) were hauled over from the Terme di Costantino on the Quirinal Hill.