Santa Maria del Popolo

Church · Campo Marzio (Piazza del Popolo)Rome,Italy

A church inside Rome's northern gate that gathered art for centuries, with two Caravaggios facing each other and a chapel designed by Raphael.

Santa Maria del Popolo keeps its two Caravaggios in a chapel to the left of the high altar, hung on the side walls facing each other rather than facing you. One shows a man thrown off a horse in a burst of light; the other an old man being levered upright on a cross by workmen. Because they sit at right angles to the visitor you always see them from a sharp angle, in the low slanting light Caravaggio painted them for. Across the church, the Chigi Chapel was designed by Raphael in 1513 for the banker Agostino Chigi, with two pyramids for tombs and a dome of mosaic. Raphael died, the family lost its money, and the chapel sat unfinished for over a century until Bernini completed it in the 1650s and added two figures of his own. The church stands just inside the northern gate, which for centuries was the door everyone arriving from the north came through, and it gathered art over those same centuries.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Bring a one-euro coin for the Cerasi Chapel — without the light box the two canvases are unreadable brown rectangles, and the whole point of them is where the light falls.
Late afternoon is the safest window — the midday closure is long, Sunday mornings belong to Mass, and the chapels are roped off while services are running.
The church empties exactly when the square outside fills — groups photograph the obelisk and the twin domes and move on, so the middle of the afternoon is quiet indoors.
Stand at the corner of the Cerasi Chapel, not in the middle — the paintings were made to be seen from an angle by someone entering, and from square on they lose their depth.

Things to do

1
Put a coin in to light the chapel paintings
Stand at the rail of the Cerasi Chapel, put a coin in the light box, and watch the two paintings come out of the dark. On the left a man lies under a horse with light falling across him. On the right, workmen strain to lift a cross with an old man already nailed to it. Neither painting is arranged to please the person looking at it.
2
Look up into the mosaic dome
In the Chigi Chapel, stand under the centre and look at the small dome. God the creator sits at the top and the planets circle beneath him, each with an angel steering it. Raphael designed it, and it is one of very few mosaics in Rome made during the Renaissance rather than inherited from before it.
3
Walk behind the high altar
The choir behind the altar was rebuilt around 1505 and has two large wall tombs facing each other and a painted vault above. It is usually empty and almost always overlooked, and it is the calmest place in a church that most visitors pass through in a few minutes.