Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and Pulcino della Minerva at piazza Minerva, Rome
The Basilica of Saint Mary Above Minerva (Latin: Basilica Sanctae Mariae supra Minervam, Italian: Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva) is a titular minor basilica and one of the most important churches of the Roman Catholic Dominican order in Rome, Italy. The church, located in the Piazza della Minerva in the Campus Martius region, is considered the only Gothic church in Rome. It houses the tombs of the St. Catherine of Siena and the Dominican painter Fra Angelico. The father of modern astronomy Galileo Galilei, after tried for heresy in the adjoining monastery, abjured his scientific theses in the church on the 22nd of June 1633. The basilica gets its name because, like many early Christian basilicas, it was built directly over (sopra) the foundations of a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis, but erroneously assimilated to Minerva. Behind a self-effacing facade, its arched vaulting is painted with brilliant red ribbing, and blue with gilded stars, a 19th century restoration in the Gothic taste. The basilica is located on the small piazza Minerva close to the Pantheon, in the rione Pigna. n front of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva there is one of the most curious monuments of Rome, the so-called Pulcino della Minerva. It is a statue designed by the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (and carried out by his pupil Ercole Ferrata in 1667) of an elephant as the supporting base for the Egyptian obelisk found in the Dominicans' garden. It is the shortest of the eleven Egyptian obelisks in Rome and is said to have been one of two obelisks moved from Sais, where they were built during the 589 BC-570 BC reign of the pharaoh Apries, from the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt.
Size: 3454px × 5200px
Location: Rome, Italy, Europe
Photo credit: © Vaios Vitos / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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