Santa Maria Maggiore - in the spotlight once again for the burial of Pope Francis

We mark the passing of Pope Francis with a re-post of RST's look inside - and outside - of the basilica where he was buried today, April 26, 2025 - Santa Maria Maggiore. The time we visited here - more than 5 years ago now, our eyes were mostly turned to the mosaics in the loggia of the basilica. We did note the great Renaissance sculptor Bernini is buried here. And we saw the (mostly) private Papal rooms, bearing many references to Pope Paul V (1605-21), another Pope - with Francis there are now 8 - buried in the church.

From May 27, 2021:

If Church Lady were in Rome...she would direct you to the loggia of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of only four papal basilicas in Rome. The 13th-century mosaics here are magnificent. They were originally on the facade of the church, but were made more difficult to see from the street when, in the 18th century, a new portico was created, along with the loggia where the mosaics now seem almost hidden.

The top half of the mosaics are traditional depictions. For example, the Christ figure in Byzantine style in the upper half of the mosaic wall. That wall also curves slightly, apparently so that the mosaics were not foreshortened for someone viewing them from the outside (when they were originally the outside facade).

Other mosaics elaborate on the founding of the church - these stories are always fun. The photo at right show mosaics depicting a Pope and a patrician, John, dreaming.

The basic legend of the church is that it was founded on the spot of an August snowfall, a miracle if there ever was one. Mary predicted this snowfall in John's dream, and the patch of snow was found the next morning. So, of course, childless John and his wife then needed to fund the building of the church. This is a 4th century event that was first recorded in the 1200s.

Another mosaic (below) shows the snowfall. The snowfall continues to be celebrated each August 5 with the dropping of white rose petals from the basilica's dome, which we - who avoid the heat of Rome in August (although we might make an exception this year if Italy would get Covid under control and let us in) - have never seen.

One might wonder about the rather odd angel at the side of the photo at left. There are four angels in the loggia by Pietro Bracci. They date from the 18th century and were moved from their positions inside the church where apparently they blocked the view of the apse (another photo of them below). It's almost as though the church decided to use the loggia as a storage place for surplus artworks.

Another oddity from the original positioning of the back wall of the loggia as the outside wall of the church is the "oculus" or round window - that would have been a window on the facade of the church. Bill took the photo below that shows the column topped by the Virgin in the piazza in front of the church - a reflection in the oculus.

The column itself is, like most of Rome's columns, an ancient one from the Forum, moved here in 1614 and then crowned with the statue of Mary and Child. It's also known as the Column of Peace, and it's an archetype for Marian columns around the world. In the photo, there's a mosaic of a column as well, meaning the Colonna family must have been involved in the church's funding at some point.

One can only see these mosaics and the other features of the loggia with a paid tour, which costs very little. Euro 5 a few years ago. Our tour guide was excellent. As a bonus, he took us into the Papal "back rooms" where almost everything has Pope Paul V's (1605-21) name on it. (Photos at end of post.)

A final bonus from the guide was the great sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini's burial site in the church, a modest floor plaque here:

There is much, much more to see in the basilica. This post focuses almost solely on the loggia, itself a taste of what's inside, and a reminder of the richness of art and culture in the hundreds of churches in Rome, or... part of what we miss in Rome.

Dianne (aka, Church Lady)

Shared Houses Make Bad Neighbors: Paint Jobs on the via Casilina

We were waiting in the hot sun for the Trenino that runs along via Casilina, when we saw something that made us wonder how people manage to get along. Across Casilina, in Pigneto, were some substantial palazzi, each with a new paint job. 

Except...except only half of each villa had been newly painted. The other half remained as it was--a trifle shabby. Obviously, the establishments were shared--half owned by one proprietor, half by another. The proprietor who wanted to paint his half wouldn't paint the other half for free, and the other proprietor--one imagines--wouldn't come up with the money, either. Or maybe he, or she, decided that with all the graffiti on the lower floor, it didn't much matter.  

Here's the result:

Bill 

P.S. We found a house in Catford, UK, that's even more "divided." 

Casa Balla: A Visit to the Home of the Futurist Artist - Home in Rome Series #5

Above, a cramped hallway with every surface painted, and light fixtures designed by Balla.

Among its many contemporary wonders, Rome has the home of Futurist artist Giacomo Balla, an apartment Balla made into one of his great works of art, thanks to the contemporary national art gallery MAXXI which restored and manages it. Every surface of the multi-room apartment in the della Vittoria neighborhood (just north of Prati and the Vatican) is covered with the great 20th-century Futurist's art.

The Turin-born Balla moved into the home in June1929, when he was 58, with his wife and two daughters, both painters. They transformed the "clerical" apartment into a work of art in which they all lived until their deaths, the last in 1994.

Every inch is designed and decorated, from chairs and rugs (left) to lights (below).

Clothes, dishware, cabinets, door handles - nothing escaped Balla's desire to shape it, design it, paint it. Below, a small desk and dresser under a loft bed, with Rome the Second time authors taking a selfie in the mirror.

Right, the "Studiolo Rosso" (Little Red Study) where Balla wrote. It's not for the claustrophobic among us.

Left, even clothes were fashioned to the Futurist's design, clothes and the closet doors - inside and out.

When we visited in April of last year, the salone was set up as the artist's studio (above). It also hosted an exhibition of Balla works on paper. The design of furniture - chairs, tables, desks - is, of course, all Futurist.

We've put a few more photos at the end of the post - but you will want to see this for yourself. It's extraordinary. Don't miss it.

Casa Balla's schedule is somewhat unpredictable. It was open this past December and January, and is open now (from March 1) through April 27. After that, who knows? One can visit the home only with a small group tour (in Italian but likely some people will speak some English and it's worth it even if you can't understand the tour leader's talk - a small and informative dual-language pamphlet is available), and advance tickets from MAXXI, get them here: https://casaballa.maxxi.art/en/ - that's the English site. If you scroll down a bit, a bubble will open up at the upper right for conversion to Italian ("IT", if in Italian, do the same and you'll see "EN" for English). Thursday through Sunday, 10-12 and 4-6 on the hour. Interestingly, the building has an elevator (the apartment is on a fairly high floor), but it's generally not available to MAXXI visitors (I suppose they aren't paying for their share of the elevator).

Balla joins our "Home in Rome Series," the other 4 of which were posted in 2011 and 2013: Goethe, de Chirico, Pirandello, and Moravia.

Dianne

A lovely pink and aqua bathroom.

Bottles that would make Morandi proud.

The elevator you can't ride.

The Fascist-era entrance to the building, with no hint of what's inside.

The Hospital Where Pope Francis Is Being Treated: Policlinico Gemelli in Rome

Main hospital buildings, with statue of Pope John Paul II (and smokers).

We wish Pope Francis well. The news media are full of reports of his hospitalization at Rome's Gemelli Hospital (Policlinico Gemelli). It's in a location few non-Romans know. We thought some of those non-Romans might appreciate photos of more of the sprawling complex where the Pope is being treated. We went out there (and it is to most people "out there") one day looking for wall art. In the process, we explored the hospital and learned something about it. Most of our photos of the hospital complex are at the end of a December 2019 post that we have reprinted here mostly as it was published then.

We learned (after our 2019 visit) the Gemelli complex has 5,000 employees and hosts about 30,000 people on any given day. Hence, my reference below to a "small city" - perhaps not so small.

Getting to Gemelli and finding the works was another issue. The complex is so enormous that we had problems even finding our way in - it's not made for pedestrian access.  Once in, most people - and we asked a lot of them, including at the front desk and in the library - had never heard of the work of the street artist we hoped to find there, even though he had recently completed the Leonardo shown below.  And, the Caravaggio (also explained below) is in a building quite a distance from the main ones, on a hill. At one point, due to my poor translation, I thought we were looking for 7 works by Ravo (mistaking the "Seven works of mercy" - also a failure of my training in art history- sorry, Mrs. Reinhart from Stanford-in-Italy).

Bill hauled us out to Trionfale and the hospital complex (no mean feat - these are not roads meant for anything but high-speed autos) on a day when no rain was predicted.  So, of course, it rained (recall, we are on a scooter).  Ultimately, the adventure was successful.  We saw two magnificent pieces of wall art, a glimpse into the life of hospitals in Rome (not that I haven't had others - very close up and personal), and the rather unfortunate story that most people don't even know these paintings exist.

To some, the painting above may be familiar.  It's Caravaggio's 1607 "Seven Works of Mercy," the original now in Naples, here replicated on the immense exterior wall of one of the many buildings of the Policlinico Gemelli (Gemelli hospital - more like a small city) in Rome's northern Trionfale quarter.

The artist signs himself Ravo; full name Andrea Mattoni, a Swiss-Italian whose hallmark is replicating the Old Masters or, as Ravo states it, "the recovery of classicism in the contemporary."  The Caravaggio above, completed in December 2017, was the most complex wall painting Ravo had done to date. In an interview, he stated (not my translation): 

Closeup of Ravo's painting; "Visit the
imprisoned and feed the hungry."

“It’s like if I was a conductor who present a symphony drawing from an immense repertoire and my theater is the territory itself. I become a transmission channel that follows the ancient tradition of the copy of the work, a practice that was once widespread for the diffusion of paintings. I try to present them to a larger and unexpected audience, carrying forward also my background: graffiti. In fact, the spray is the common thread that connects with my past, where I come from, and it is precisely for this reason that I chose the spray can as my running stick.”  

(You can see the work in process in late 2017 here.)

He is, of course, speaking our language when he inserts the unexpected - in this case the classical - into an unattractive contemporary landscape - the suburban hospital complex.

Ravo completed a second work at Gemelli this past Spring. We saw it shortly after it was completed.  "Madonna Litta," a late 15th-century painting in the Hermitage, is attributed to Leonardo. Ravo painted it in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death.  It sits above a busy road within the hospital complex:

For photos of the Leonardo work in process, see here (article in Italian).

Ravo also has a Facebook page. One of his posts (they are in English) started with this quote: "All art is contemporary, or it was at some point."

One can debate whether replicating great art is itself art. It has been historically. And we like what Ravo is doing to our often isolated and forbidding urban landscapes

Below, more of our hospital pix.  

Dianne

The entrance to the complex is rather unassuming,
though somewhat intimidating for pedestrians.

The hospital seems to have its own highway system.

And its own bridges...Calatrava step aside!

Hard to capture the effect with this small photo, but this
 could have been the largest - and busiest -  hospital cafeteria
we've ever seen. We didn't even try to get a coffee.

No post is complete without a scooterpark pic.
(The sign says "motorcycle exit.") Ravo's Leonardo
painting is up on the right.

 

The Roman Temple Nobody Knows: Temple of Minerva Medica

 

Paolo Anesi, 18th century

The Temple of Minerva Medica, as it's called, is one of the most easily accessible ancient structures in all of Rome. It's right there on via Giolitti, the busy street that runs along the south side of Stazione Termini and the tracks beyond. Not far from Piazza Maggiore, and just a stone's throw from Santa Bibiana, the also-neglected baroque church whose facade was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

A Yale University website describes the temple as "forlorn," and that description isn't inaccurate, in that the building is uncomfortably sandwiched between a streetcar line (and via Giolitti) on one side and a swarm of railroad tracks on the other. 

But it's also quite imposing, and reasonably well preserved for a 4th-century CE edifice. And it may be architecturally significant, in that (we read) its decagonal design, which included an oculus, occupies the architectural space between the octagonal dining room of the Domus Aurea--and the Pantheon. The Temple's dome collapsed in 1828, lasting only about 1400 years. The photo below makes it look like the oculus is still there--but it's only one of the arches. 

One might call it the Other Pantheon. 

So you'll want to see it, even if only through the fence by which it is surrounded. (Right, Dianne, wishing she could just walk in.)

The problem is that you won't be looking at the Temple of Minerva Medica. It's called that, yes, but only because, in the 18th century, a statue known as Athena Giustiniani (below) was presumably found there. That statue of the goddess had, and has, a snake at her feet. And because snakes were identified at the time with healing, the "Medica" name was affixed to the Temple. (Minerva is the Etruscan counterpart of the Greek Athena.) About the time the Temple was erroneously named, the artist Paolo Anesi painted the picture of it at the top of this post.

The misunderstanding all started with this statue. 

On Wikipedia and the like, the Temple of Minerva Medica is often described as a nymphaeum, or a "ruined nymphaeum" (as if there were lots of pristine ones around). Because the Temple is not mentioned (at all, apparently), in the ancient literature, no one knows for sure that the building was, in fact, a nymphaeum. That's only one theory among three. It may have housed a dining room, say some, although that seems a curiously minimal use for so large a structure. Others note that a heating system has been discovered beneath the floor, and that a sacred spring once ran under it, allowing the building to serve as a bathing facility for the elites of the day--though that use, too, is far from certain. 

In the right light and from the right angle, the Temple can look quite dramatic. 

Centrale Montemartini, the Ostiense museum that is #22 on RST's Top 40, houses two statues of Roman magistrates that were excavated from the Temple. 

Above: a recent partial restoration used a lot of new brick. 

Below: a newish storyboard, left, in English as well as Italian, provides some history of the Temple. Get there--if you can!--before the taggers render it illegible.

Bill 

In Search of the 1950s: The Aqua-Blue Building on via Bari

 

We lived this year just a few blocks from one of my favorite modernist Rome buildings. Romans might call it "particolare"--one of a kind, sui generis, unique, maybe odd. You'll find it at via Bari 5, corner of via Rovigo, just a few blocks uphill along via Catania from Piazzale delle Provincie, one of two large circular piazze in the Piazza Bologna area. 

Same building, via Bari 5, from the less than 90 degree corner with via Rovigo -
 a very different look, no camera tricks employed.

he palazzina, in the mid-century-modern style, was constructed between 1958, when Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" was #1on the US charts, and 1961, when teens were doing the "Twist" to Chubby Checker's hit song. In architecture, post-modernism had yet to assert itself as the next wave, but architects everywhere were experimenting with forms that went beyond the severe rectilinear modernism of the 1930s and 1940s (a good example of that sort of modernism is Rome's university--La Sapienza, nearby). The late 1950s and 1960s were also decades in which architects and planners experimented with buildings and other structures that were elevated--in the US, "skyways"--elevated highways--were the rage, and in Rome, planners decided to place the "sopraelevata" [1966-1975] down the center of Scalo San Lorenzo (a 15-minute walk from via Bari 5). 

Above, the sopraelevata from the street.

Architect Renato Valle framed the via Bari building in aqua-blue glass (now an iconic 1950s color), and used the less-than-90-degree corner at via Rovigo to give his structure an angular shape that defined the rectilinear tradition. And it's elevated. Today, under the building, there's a gas station. Significantly, the building is owned by, and houses offices of, Enerpetroli, a company that operates 150 gas stations in central Italy. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find other information about architect Valle. If you can contribute, please do!

Bill