Discover Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore

The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore stands on the summit of the Esquiline Hill and is one of the four papal basilicas of Rome — the largest Marian church in the city, and regarded as the first Marian sanctuary and the mother of all Marian shrines. It is dedicated to the Virgin under the title of Our Lady of the Snows.

Its legal position is unusual. Under the Lateran Treaty of 1929 the basilica stands in Italy rather than in Vatican City, but as property of the Holy See, Italy is obliged to protect that ownership and to grant it the immunity international law gives to the premises of foreign diplomatic missions.

The present building was raised under Pope Sixtus III (432–440), and its fifth-century mosaics — along the nave and across the triumphal arch — are among the most important early depictions of the Virgin to survive. The apse mosaic, the Coronation of the Virgin, was added in 1295 and signed by the Franciscan friar Jacopo Torriti. The façade a visitor approaches is much later: Ferdinando Fuga built it in the 1740s for Benedict XIV, wrapping the medieval front and leaving the older mosaic visible behind the Loggia of the Blessings.

It holds two of the most venerated objects in Rome — the relic of the Holy Crib of the Child Jesus, and the Salus Populi Romani, the image of the Madonna and Child taken as protectress of the Roman people. Since 2025 it has also held the tomb of Pope Francis.

The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore stands on the summit of the Esquiline Hill and is one of the four papal basilicas of Rome — the largest Marian church in the city, and regarded as the first Marian sanctuary and the mother of all Marian shrines. It is dedicated to the Virgin under the title of Our Lady of the Snows.

Its legal position is unusual. Under the Lateran Treaty of 1929 the basilica stands in Italy rather than in Vatican City, but as property of the Holy See, Italy is obliged to protect that ownership and to grant it the immunity international law gives to the premises of foreign diplomatic missions.

The present building was raised under Pope Sixtus III (432–440), and its fifth-century mosaics — along the nave and across the triumphal arch — are among the most important early depictions of the Virgin to survive. The apse mosaic, the Coronation of the Virgin, was added in 1295 and signed by the Franciscan friar Jacopo Torriti. The façade a visitor approaches is much later: Ferdinando Fuga built it in the 1740s for Benedict XIV, wrapping the medieval front and leaving the older mosaic visible behind the Loggia of the Blessings.

It holds two of the most venerated objects in Rome — the relic of the Holy Crib of the Child Jesus, and the Salus Populi Romani, the image of the Madonna and Child taken as protectress of the Roman people. Since 2025 it has also held the tomb of Pope Francis.

An early Christian basilica inside an eighteenth-century wrapper. The plan is the original one: a long nave flanked by colonnades, ending in a triumphal arch and an apse. What a visitor meets from the piazza, though, is Ferdinando Fuga's façade of the 1740s, built for Benedict XIV over the medieval front — which is why the older façade mosaic survives, visible from behind the Loggia of the Blessings rather than from the square.

The columns are older than the church. Forty of them carry the nave — thirty-six marble and four granite — and they either come from the first basilica on the site or from some other antique Roman building. They were not uniform. Fuga pared them down and shortened them to match, then gave them identical gilt-bronze capitals, which is why a fifth-century colonnade reads as an eighteenth-century one.

The mosaics are the building's real architecture. The nave panels and the triumphal arch are of the 430s and depict scenes from the life of the Virgin and of Christ alongside Old Testament subjects — Moses striking the Red Sea, the Egyptians drowning in it. They were planned during a period of concentrated argument about the nature and status of the Virgin and of the incarnate Christ, and they are read as milestones in her depiction. The apse is a separate campaign: Torriti's Coronation of 1295.

The chapels are Baroque interventions in a Palaeochristian shell. Domenico Fontana's Sistine Chapel in the right transept — Sixtus V's, and emphatically not the Vatican's, which is Sixtus IV's — holds the tombs of Sixtus V and his patron Pius V, with four gilded bronze angels by Sebastiano Torregiani carrying a ciborium that is a model of the chapel itself. Beneath its altar lies the Oratory of the Nativity. The Mannerist decoration was completed between 1587 and 1589 by a large team under Cesare Nebbia and Giovanni Guerra.

And the tower is medieval. The fourteenth-century campanile is the tallest in Rome at about 75 metres, and it is the only part of the exterior that predates Fuga.

It was built on ground already in use, which is why its footprint is where it is. Before the present church there was something else on the summit of the Esquiline: some sources have a pre-existing building adapted as a church in the 420s under Pope Celestine I, and the basilica's alternative name, "Liberian", may record Pope Liberius converting a palace of the Sicinini family. Excavation in 1966 reached the remains of a Roman building beneath the floor, including an imperial calendar with fasti and agricultural annotations, dated to around 200 by one scholar and to the fourth century by another.

The church itself went up fast, in one campaign, under one pope. Sixtus III replaced that earlier structure between 432 and 440, and the decoration went in with the building rather than afterwards — which is the single most important thing about the fabric. Richard Krautheimer attributes the magnificence of the work partly to the abundance of means available, and the mosaic programme belongs to a moment of intense theological argument about the Virgin, immediately after the Council of Ephesus. The builders were making a doctrinal statement in glass at the same time as they were raising walls.

Then almost nothing was demolished, and everything was added. The basilica was restored, redecorated and extended by a long line of popes — Eugene III in the twelfth century, Nicholas IV in the thirteenth, Clement X in the seventeenth, Benedict XIV in the eighteenth. The apse was redone in 1295. The open roof was closed in the sixteenth century with Giuliano da Sangallo's coffered ceiling, gilded with gold said to have come from Christopher Columbus by way of Ferdinand and Isabella to Alexander VI. Between 1575 and 1630 every altar in the building was remade.

The eighteenth century made the old church look regular. Fuga's work for Benedict XIV in the 1740s was not only the new façade: he also modified the interior, and his treatment of the colonnade is the clearest example of what "restoration" meant then. The forty ancient columns were mismatched, as reused columns are. He cut them down to a common size and fitted them with identical gilt-bronze capitals. The uniformity a visitor reads as original is a Baroque correction of a fifth-century irregularity.

The most recent campaigns are museum work and a grave. Three new museum rooms were inaugurated on 11 December 2024 ahead of the 2025 Holy Year, on the first floor of the Canons' Palace of Paul V, reached by the Great Staircase of Benedict XIV's Canons' Palace, the Loggia of the Blessings and the Chapter Hall. And in 2025 Pope Francis was buried in the side nave between the Sforza and Pauline chapels — the first structural addition in a long time that most visitors come specifically to see.

Is Pope Francis buried here? Yes. In 2025 he was buried in the side nave, between the Sforza Chapel and the Pauline Chapel. He chose Santa Maria Maggiore rather than St Peter's.

Does it cost anything? The basilica itself is entered without a ticket. The Liberian Museum Complex, the panoramic terraces and the Archaeological Area are ticketed separately, and the basilica does not publish those prices in any form we could verify — its ticketing page loads them only in the browser. Check at the desk.

What is the dress code? Shoulders and knees covered, no sleeveless or low-cut clothing, no miniskirts, and no hats. It applies to the museum as well as the church and it is enforced.

Is the Sistine Chapel here the one with Michelangelo? No. The Sistine Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore is Sixtus V's, built by Domenico Fontana, and contains his tomb and that of Pius V. The Vatican's is Sixtus IV's. The names collide; the chapels have nothing to do with one another.

How old are the mosaics? The nave and triumphal arch mosaics date from the building itself, under Sixtus III between 432 and 440. The apse mosaic is later — 1295, signed by Jacopo Torriti.

Can I go up the campanile or onto the terraces? The 360-degree panoramic terraces are part of the ticketed museum route and access is arranged by emailing visitemuseo.smm@basilica.va. The fourteenth-century campanile, the tallest in Rome at about 75 metres, is not a public climb.

Is it in Italy or in the Vatican? In Italy. Under the 1929 Lateran Treaty the basilica is Italian territory but the property of the Holy See, which Italy must protect and grant the immunity international law gives to foreign diplomatic premises.

Is it accessible? There is an access ramp, accessible toilets inside, mobile platforms to reach the side chapels on request from staff, and a lift in the Museum Complex. Terrace and excavation access must be arranged by email.

Why Our Lady of the Snows? From the legend that snow fell on the Esquiline on 5 August, in high summer, marking the ground where the church was to be built. The story is first recorded only after AD 1000.