Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore site features

Santa Maria Maggiore is a long, bright hall divided by two straight rows of columns, and the columns are older than the church. Forty of them carry the nave, and they come either from the first basilica or from another antique Roman building — reused shafts holding up a later roof, which is why the colonnade is so regular and the capitals are not all of a piece.

The length is the first thing the eye does. The nave runs unbroken from the door to the apse with no screen across it, so the whole depth of the building is legible at once, and the eye is pulled straight to the far end.

The decoration that matters is high up and easy to miss. The mosaics of the nave and the triumphal arch are milestones in the depiction of the Virgin, showing scenes of her life and that of Christ. They sit in a band above the columns and below the windows, which means you are looking up past the light to see them.

Off the aisles, two large chapels break the symmetry. The chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the right transept is named after Pope Sixtus V — and is not to be confused with the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, a confusion common enough that the basilica warns about it.

The building is a record of papal additions rather than one design. It was restored, redecorated and extended by various popes including Eugene III (1145–1153), Nicholas IV (1288–1292) and Clement X, so the fabric changes period as you move through it.

Two objects draw most of the devotion. The basilica enshrines the holy crib of the Child Jesus and the venerated image of the Salus Populi Romani, the Madonna and Child. A room in the museum presents the church as the "Bethlehem of the West" — the Basilica of the Holy Nativity, and the place where the popes have for centuries [celebrated Christmas].

Since 2025 there has been a third focus, and it has changed where people stand. The tomb of Pope Francis is in the side nave between the Sforza Chapel and the Pauline Chapel; the flow of visitors to it is now a feature of the interior.

There is a museum route above and an excavation below. The Polo Museale takes in the Liberian Museum, the Loggia delle Benedizioni, the Sala dei Papi, Bernini's staircase and the 360-degree panoramic terraces; the museum rooms are on the first floor, in the heart of the Canons' Palace of Pope Paul V (1605–1621). Among the holdings is the Chasuble of Saint Jerome, a very rare example of a medieval liturgical vestment. Underneath, in 1966 archaeologists found the remains of a Roman building including an imperial calendar with fasti.

Why it is called what it is called has two answers. It is sometimes Our Lady of the Snows, after a legend set around 352 during the pontificate of Liberius; the alternative is that the name Liberian Basilica is independent of the legend, Liberius having transformed an existing palace.

At the door, expect checks. Admission is only for visitors dressed in a dignified manner — no sleeveless or low-cut clothing; large bags, suitcases and backpacks are not permitted; knives, scissors and metal tools must be handed in; and there is no cloakroom. The Museum Complex opens Monday to Saturday, 8.00 to 18.30, last entry 18.00, while the panoramic terraces and the archaeological area are arranged by email rather than walked into.

The fifth-century nave and arch mosaics

Scenes from the life of the Virgin and of Christ, with Old Testament subjects including Moses striking the Red Sea and the Egyptians drowning in it. Of the 430s, contemporary with the walls, and read as milestones in the depiction of the Virgin. They are small and high — bring a zoom.

Torriti's apse mosaic

The Coronation of the Virgin, 1295, signed by the Franciscan friar Jacopo Torriti. It closes the view east and is eight and a half centuries younger than the nave above which it sits.

The tomb of Pope Francis

In the side nave between the Sforza Chapel and the Pauline Chapel, since 2025. He chose this basilica over St Peter's, and the placement is deliberately modest.

The Salus Populi Romani

The venerated image of the Madonna and Child taken as patroness and protectress of the Roman people, granted a pontifical decree of canonical coronation by Gregory XVI in the bull Cælestis Regina Maxima of 15 August 1838.

The Sistine Chapel of Sixtus V

Domenico Fontana's chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the right transept — not the Vatican's, which is Sixtus IV's. It holds the tombs of Sixtus V and of his early patron Pius V, and four gilded bronze angels by Sebastiano Torregiani supporting a ciborium modelled on the chapel itself. Beneath the altar is the Oratory of the Nativity, where Ignatius of Loyola celebrated his first Mass as a priest on 25 December 1538.

Bernini's grave

Just outside that chapel lies the tomb of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his family — the architect of half of Baroque Rome, buried without ceremony in a side aisle.

Arnolfo di Cambio's nativity, 1291

In the museum: the first nativity scene in the history of art, a marble group shown in a case that can be walked around and viewed from every side. Beside it, the so-called Chasuble of Saint Jerome, a very rare surviving medieval liturgical vestment.

The gilded ceiling and the campanile

Sangallo's sixteenth-century coffered ceiling overhead, and outside the fourteenth-century bell tower — at roughly 75 metres, the tallest in Rome.