Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who led in rebuilding the Basilica Santa Maria del Popolo?
The architect or architects of this innovative project remain unknown due to a lack of contemporary sources. Giorgio Vasari in his "Lives" attributed all the important papal projects in Rome during Sixtus IV to a Florentine, Baccio Pontelli including the basilica and monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo. Modern researchers deemed this claim highly dubious and proposed other names among them Andrea Bregno, a Lombard sculptor and architect whose workshop certainly received important commissions in the basilica. The fundamental differences between the façade and the interior suggest that maybe more than one architect was working on the building.
The first such guidebooks for Medieval Rome were compiled in the 12th century to address the needs of travelers to Rome. The Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome are listed in the following order in the guide by Franzini (1595): San Giovanni Laterano, St Peter's, San Paolo fuori le mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Lorenzo fuori le mura, San Sebastiano, and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Giovanni Baglione in his book list nine major churches of Rome, adding somewhat peculiarly the church of Santa Maria Annunziata dei Gonfalone and the trio of churches known once as "alle Tre Fontane", and located at the site of St Paul's martyrdom: Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio alle Tre Fontane, Santa Maria Scala Coeli and San Paolo alle Tre Fontane.
Much like the rest of Italy, Rome is predominantly Roman Catholic. Although Rome is home to the Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica, Rome's cathedral is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, located to the south-east of the city-centre. There are around 900 churches in Rome in total, aside from the cathedral itself, some others of note include: the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, the Basilica di San Clemente, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and the Church of the Gesu. There are also the ancient Catacombs of Rome underneath the city. Numerous highly important religious educational institutions are also in Rome, such as the Pontifical Lateran University, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Pontifical Gregorian University, and Pontifical Oriental Institute.
In the following century, the Villa di Poggio a Caiano was used by successive Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. In 1587, Bianca Cappello and Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany died there within a day of one another after short illnesses; raising the still unsolved question of their poisoning by Francesco’s brother Ferdinand, who succeeded Francesco as Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the architects Giuseppe and Giovan Battista Ruggeri and Antonio Maria Ferri extended the villa. Major improvements to the gardens were also carried out after it came into the ownership of Maria Luisa, Queen of Etruria.
The long time gap is explained by the fact that the cardinal was buried in the Old St. Peter's Basilica together with his uncle and benefactor, Cardinal Antonio Pallavicini Gentili (Antoniotto). In 1596 their bodies were relocated to the cemetery Santa Maria del Popolo where Antoniotto's monument was set up and later transferred to the Montemirabile Chapel. Philipp Zitzlsperger calls this a particularly instructive example of the separation of the body and the tomb which increasingly came to be the norm in Rome from the second half of the 16th century because the location of the cardinal's corpse has not been established but the transferral of the remains was reason enough to the relatives to erect a cenotaph in the church itself.
A small but notable example of Gothic revival in Italy is the Pedrocchi Café in Padua, Italy (1837), by Giuseppe Jappelli. It borrowed the Venetian Gothic style plus the pinnacles of Milan Cathedral. It became famous as the meeting place of Italian patriots rebelling against Austrian rule in 1848.
Despite the fact that Rome is home to the Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica, Rome's cathedral is the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, located to the south-east of the city-centre. There are around 900 churches in Rome in total, aside from the cathedral itself, some others of note include: the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, the Basilica di San Clemente, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and the Church of the Gesù. There are also the ancient Catacombs of Rome underneath the city. Numerous highly important religious educational institutions are also in Rome, such as the Pontifical Lateran University, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Pontifical Gregorian University, and Pontifical Oriental Institute.
With the German occupation of Rome in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, came rumors of a plot to kidnap the Pope; modern scholars are still at odds over the authenticity of such allegations. The Vatican City itself was never occupied; in fact, the chief concern within the Vatican was the potential for lawlessness in the period between the German and Allied occupation, not the potential for German occupation. However the Vatican Police Force in conjunction with the Swiss Guard maintained order.
The Holy See dates back to early Christianity, and is the primate episcopal see of the Catholic Church, with 1.3 billion Catholics around the world distributed in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. The independent Vatican City-state, on the other hand, came into existence in 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation, not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy.
The pope resides in Vatican City, an independent state within the city of Rome, set up by the 1929 Lateran Pacts between the Holy See and Italy. As popes were sovereigns of the papal states (754–1870), so do they exercise absolute civil authority in the microstate of Vatican City since 1929.
Rosa Vercellana, commonly known as "Rosina" and, in Piedmontese as "La Bela Rosin" ("the beautiful Rosin"), was the mistress and later wife of King Victor Emmanuel II. She was made Countess of Mirafiori and Fontanafredda, but never Queen of Italy. As the Savoy family refused to allow her to be buried next to her husband in the Pantheon, her children had a mausoleum built for her in a similar form and on a smaller scale in Turin, next to the road to the Castello di Mirafiori. The circular copper-domed neoclassical monument, surmounted by a Latin cross and surrounded by a large park, was designed by Angelo Dimezzi and completed in 1888.
Upon the death of Pope Pius V (1566–1572), the conclave chose Cardinal Boncompagni, who assumed the name of Gregory XIII in homage to the great reforming Pope, Gregory I (590–604), surnamed the Great. It was a very brief conclave, lasting less than 24 hours. Many historians have attributed this to the influence and backing of the Spanish King. Cardinal Borromeo and the cardinals wishing reform accepted Boncompagni's candidature and so supported him in the conclave while the Spanish faction also deemed him acceptable due to his success as a nuncio in Spain.
The protests raised by Martin Luther that began in 1517 did not initially receive much attention from the papacy. Luther and his supporters concreted the principles of the Protestant Reformation during the 1520s, sparking the development of many reform movements in various regions of Italy. By the time of the pontificate of Paul III, the Reform movement had swept much of Europe away from the Catholic Church. In response, Paul III issued the "Licet ab initio", establishing inquisitions in Rome in 1542. These inquisitions consisted of six cardinals given the authority to investigate heresy and to appoint deputies when they deemed necessary.
A similar event happened in 1939; in that case a confusing mixture of white and black smoke emanated from the Sistine Chapel chimney. In a note to Vatican Radio, the secretary of the Papal conclave at the time, a monsignor named Santoro said that a new pope, Eugenio Pacelli, had been properly elected regardless of the color of the smoke. Pacelli took the name Pius XII.
The late 5th century saw the dissolution of Roman authority in the west, and the last person to hold the title of emperor in the West was deposed in 476 by the general Odoacer. Odoacer ruled as King of Italy for 13 years, but in 489 the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Ostrogoth King Theoderic the Great to re-take the Italian peninsula. After losing the Battle of Verona, Odoacer retreated to Ravenna, where he withstood a siege of three years by Theoderic, until the taking of Rimini deprived Ravenna of supplies. Theoderic took Ravenna in 493, supposedly slew Odoacer with his own hands, and Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. Theoderic, following his imperial predecessors, also built many splendid buildings in and around Ravenna, including his palace church Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, an Arian cathedral (now Santo Spirito) and Baptistery, and his own Mausoleum just outside the walls.
Both Odoacer and Theoderic and their followers were Arian Christians, but co-existed peacefully with the Latins, who were largely Catholic Orthodox. Ravenna's Orthodox bishops carried out notable building projects, of which the sole surviving one is the Capella Arcivescovile. Theoderic allowed Roman citizens within his kingdom to be subject to Roman law and the Roman judicial system. The Goths, meanwhile, lived under their own laws and customs. In 519, when a mob had burned down the synagogues of Ravenna, Theoderic ordered the town to rebuild them at its own expense.
When the capital of Spain was transferred from Toledo to Madrid in 1561, the seat of the Church in Spain remained in Toledo and the new capital had no cathedral. Plans to build a cathedral in Madrid dedicated to the Virgin of Almudena were discussed as early as the 16th century but even though Spain built more than 40 cities in the new world during that century and plenty of cathedrals, the cost of expanding and keeping the Empire came first and the construction of Madrid's cathedral was postponed. Making the cathedral the largest that the world had ever seen was then a priority, all other main Spanish cities had centuries old cathedrals, Madrid also has old churches but the construction of Almudena only began in 1879.
On 26 August 1978 at 6:24 p.m. local time (4:24 p.m. UTC), the first signs of smoke appeared from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. It was unclear for over an hour whether the smoke was white to indicate a pope had been elected or black to indicate that balloting would continue. Some of the cardinals had personally deposited their notes and tally sheets in the stove, darkening what should have been white smoke. Pericle Felici, as the ranking Cardinal Deacon, then stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica and delivered the "Habemus Papam" in Latin, announcing Luciani's election. At 7:31 p.m. John Paul I appeared on the balcony and gave his blessing. When he appeared about to address the crowd, he was reminded that was not traditional and withdrew without speaking further. He invites the cardinal electors to remain in conclave for another night and dined with them, occupying the same chair as he had at their earlier group dinners.
Vatican City – an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state, being the sovereign territory of the Holy See and ruled by the Bishop of Rome—the Pope, the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. The territory of this landlocked sovereign city-state consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of approximately , and a population of just over 800. This makes Vatican City the smallest independent state in the world by both area and population.Geography of Vatican CityVatican City is an enclave in an urban area, and lacks the geographic features common to (much larger) countries:Demographics of Vatican City
A total of seven popes reigned at Avignon, all French, and all under the influence of the French Crown. In 1376, Gregory XI abandoned Avignon and moved his court to Rome (arriving on January 17, 1377). But after Gregory's death in 1378, deteriorating relations between his successor Urban VI and a faction of cardinals gave rise to the Western Schism. This started a second line of Avignon popes, subsequently regarded as illegitimate. The last Avignon antipope, Benedict XIII, lost most of his support in 1398, including that of France; after five years besieged by the French, he fled to Perpignan in 1403. The schism ended in 1417 at the Council of Constance, after two popes had reigned in opposition to the papacy in Rome.
After the Roman Pope Innocent VII died in 1406, the newly elected Roman Pope, Gregory XII, started negotiations with Benedict, suggesting that they both resign so a new Pope could be elected to reunite the Catholic Church. When these talks ended in stalemate in 1408, the French king, Charles VI, declared that France was neutral to both papal contenders. Charles helped to organise the Council of Pisa in 1409. This council was supposed to arrange for both Gregory and Benedict to resign, so that a new universally recognised Pope could be elected. To oppose this, Benedict convoked the Council of Perpignan but with little success. Since both Benedict and Gregory refused to abdicate, the only thing in Pisa that was achieved was that a third candidate to the Holy See was put forward: Peter Philarghi, who assumed the name Alexander V.
Differently from the Holy See, in existence for almost two thousand years, the Vatican City was not a sovereign state until the 20th century. In the 19th century the annexation of the Papal States by the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the subsequent establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, was not recognized by the Vatican. However, by the Lateran treaty of 1929, the Kingdom of Italy recognized Vatican City as an independent state, and "vice versa". Since then, the elected monarch of the Vatican City state has been the current pope. The pope still officially carries the title "King of the Ecclesiastical State" (in Latin: Rex Status Ecclesiæ).
The urban setting of the basilica changed fundamentally between 1816 and 1824 when Giuseppe Valadier created the monumental Neo-Classical ensemble of Piazza del Popolo, commissioned by Pope Pius VII. The ancient monastery of the Augustinians was demolished, the extensive gardens were appropriated and a new monastery was erected on a much smaller footprint in Neo-Classical style. This building covered the whole right side of the basilica with its side chapels, wrapping around the base of the bell tower and reducing the visual prominence of the basilica on the square.
After the Della Rovere era, the basilica lost its prominent role as a papal church but it remained one of the most important pilgrimage churches in the city. This was shown on 23 November 1561 when Pope Pius IV held a solemn procession from St. Peter's to the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo on the occasion of reopening the Council of Trent. Building works went on in the Chigi Chapel in a slow pace until the 1550s. The last important Renaissance addition was the Theodoli Chapel between 1555 and 1575 with rich stucco and fresco decoration by Giulio Mazzoni.
The Parish Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo () is a titular church and a minor basilica in Rome run by the Augustinian order. It stands on the north side of Piazza del Popolo, one of the most famous squares in the city. The church is hemmed in between the Pincian Hill and Porta del Popolo, one of the gates in the Aurelian Wall as well as the starting point of Via Flaminia, the most important route from the north. Its location made the basilica the first church for the majority of travellers entering the city. The church contains works by several famous artists, such as Raphael, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Caravaggio, Alessandro Algardi, Pinturicchio, Andrea Bregno, Guillaume de Marcillat and Donato Bramante.
In the meantime the pope entrusted Bernini with the task of modernizing the old basilica in contemporary Baroque style. In March 1658 Alexander VII inspected the work in the company of the architect. This proved to be a significant rebuilding that altered the character of the quattrocento basilica. The façade was changed, larger windows were opened in the nave, statues, frescos and stucco decorations were added in the interior and a new main altar was erected. Two side altars and organ lofts were built in the transept where the old Borgia Chapel was demolished. Chigi coat-of-arms, symbols and inscriptions celebrated the glory of the pope everywhere.