Audio guide
Discover this remarkable place
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This Mappu audio guide for Chiesa Nuova highlights Welcome to the Chiesa Nuova, Philip Neri and the Birth of a New Church, and From Plain Beginnings to Baroque Splendour, giving travelers a concise overview before exploring Rome.
Welcome to the Chiesa Nuova, the New Church, standing on its own piazza in the heart of Rome. That name is a nickname, and it stuck so well that Romans almost never bother with the official one. The real title is Santa Maria in Vallicella, and you are in the rione Parione, right on the boundary with the neighbouring rione Ponte, so that part of the building itself tips over into the next district. The piazza opens off Corso Vittorio Emanuele the Second, the busy artery running from Piazza del Gesù toward the Tiber. Let me be honest with you about what we know. The church you see is richly documented: a Counter-Reformation building of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, raised over an earlier church on this site and finally completed around 1605 and 1606. Its deeper past is thinner, so I will tell you plainly when something is documented history, when it is a devotional tradition, and when it is a hypothesis. And there is one striking hypothesis to keep in mind. The church sits in a slight natural hollow called la Vallicella, and one source suggests, cautiously, that a small sulfur-fed lake called Tarentum may once have lain here. We will come back to that. For now, just notice how much this quiet corner of Rome has to say.
In 1575 the older church on this site was granted to the congregation founded by Saint Philip Neri, and the rebuilding project began. That project is where the nickname comes from: the new church, la chiesa nuova. The first stone was laid that same year in the presence of Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici, the man who would later become Pope Leo the Eleventh. The design was entrusted to the architect Matteo di Città di Castello, and from 1586 to 1590 Martino Longhi the Elder took over the direction of the works, while Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi helped finance the ambitious scheme, reshaping the chapels into semicircular form so they could properly carry the great vault above. And the man behind it all? Romans called Philip Neri Pippo bbono, good old Philip, and he rests here in the Chapel of Saint Philip Neri. His body is kept in a crystal urn with a silver mask over the face. Nearby you can visit the evocative rooms of the saint, holding relics and memories of his life alongside paintings by Guercino and Guido Reni. Here is the delicious irony. When the church was built, Philip apparently intended the interior to be fairly plain, adorned with only a few selected works drawn from the life of the Blessed Virgin. His followers had other ideas, and what happened next is the story of our next stop.
Philip Neri's wish for restraint was gently swept aside. The Chiesa Nuova became a showcase of the Counter-Reformation idea that art could preach, and it holds precious works by Pietro da Cortona and by Rubens. Look up at the great nave vault, decorated by Pietro da Cortona as part of the church's seventeenth-century fresco cycle. Just as interesting is what moved and what changed. For one altar, Guido Reni painted a Saint Philip Neri with the Madonna della Vallicella. That altarpiece was eventually transferred into the rooms of the convent, and a mosaic of the same subject by Vincenzo Castellani, made between 1765 and 1774, took its place in the church. Now look up at the vault fresco showing the Madonna and Saint Philip Neri. It recalls a tradition from the building years: in 1576, during construction, Philip is said to have had a vision of the Madonna herself holding up a dangerous beam above the chapel where the Blessed Sacrament and the miraculous image of the Virgin were being kept for safety. Whatever you make of the vision, you can see how this community understood its own story: heaven, quite literally, keeping the roof on.
Now to the soil beneath your feet, and to a picture with a story. In Roman times, this low ground near the bend of the Tiber was considered unhealthy and unwholesome. Sources suggest, as a probable identification rather than a certainty, that a small lake fed by sulfurous springs stood here, known as Tarentum, and that it was counted among the entrances to the underworld, with an underground sanctuary dedicated to the deities Dis Pater and Proserpina. Take that as a hypothesis, not a headline. What is solidly recorded is a name. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the church here was also known as Santa Maria in Puteo albo, after an ancient well-head of white marble that stood nearby, since puteus is the Latin for a well. Water, springs and wells run through this site's identity. And then there is the image. This was the first church in Rome dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin, and since 1535 it has kept a fourteenth-century fresco of the Madonna with the Child and two angels. The painting was detached from an exterior wall of a nearby building and carried here after it became the focus of a celebrated account: the Madonna was said to have shed tears of blood after a drunken passer-by threw stones at the image. That is the tradition, told with reverence in this church for centuries, and it explains why this picture still draws people quietly toward it.
Before you leave the piazza, go and find the fountain. It carries an inscription that is very much in the spirit of the man who built this church: Ama Dio e non fallire, fa del bene e lassa dire, which means love God and do not fail, do good deeds and let others talk. The date carved with it is one thousand six hundred twenty-two. Turismo Roma describes this fountain as among the most unusual and little-known in the city, so it is worth a slow look. The church is more than a monument, too. In 1905 the nearby parish church of San Tommaso in Parione was judged too small for its congregation, and the Chiesa Nuova was made the parish church instead, still served by the Oratorians. In 1922 the convent became home to the Archivio Storico Capitolino, the city's historical archives, and it also houses the Vallicelliana Library, established by Philip in 1581 and described as the oldest public library in Rome, along with the Roman Newspaper Archives, which hold copies of almost every newspaper published in Rome since the eighteenth century. So as you step back out, listen to the ordinary sounds of the street and think about layers: an underworld spring, a weeping painting, a saint who wanted plain walls, and rooms full of centuries of paper. Which layer would you like to open first?
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It covers Philip Neri and the Birth of a New Church, From Plain Beginnings to Baroque Splendour, and A Hollow Called Vallicella and a Weeping Madonna, with practical context and details to notice during the visit.
In 1575 the older church on this site was granted to the congregation founded by Saint Philip Neri, and the rebuilding project began. That project is where the nickname comes from: the new church, la chiesa nuova. The first stone was laid that same year in the presence of Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici, the man who would later become Pope Leo the Eleventh. The design was entrusted to the architect Matteo di Città di Castello, and from 1586 to 1590 Martino Longhi the Elder took over the direction of the works, while Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi helped finance the ambitious scheme, reshaping the chapels into semicircular form so they could properly carry the great vault above.
You can continue with follow-up questions such as "The church is officially called Santa Maria in Vallicella, yet almost everyone says Chiesa Nuova. What happened in the sixteenth century that made the new name stick?", then keep the guide connected to your map and trip plan.
