Santa Maria della Pace

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​The Mountains shall bring peace (Psalm 72)

​This former convent chapel was built on the foundations of an earlier church close to the Piazza Navona. It was reconsecrated after a report of a miraculous bleeding of an image of the Madonna, stabbed by a vandal, in the late 1400s. It was restored in Baroque style in the 17th century under the patronage of Pope Alexander VII and the Chigi family whose coat-of-arms decorate the ceiling. This small trapezoidal space has a short nave, cruciform vaulting, and a dome decorated on its interior with octagonal coffering, with ribs extending from the lantern. In the Chigi Chapel Raphael depicted the ancient, classical Sibyls being instructed in sacred prophesy by angels. The invocation of peace (Pace) in its title is connected to the settlement of bloody conflicts in Florence and Pisa at the time of its rededication.

    
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