The Medieval Stairmaster

The church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli and its Santo Bambino in Rome, Italy

Santa Maria in Aracoeli is an ancient church. It was already old when it was first mentioned in the 7th century, but its current incarnation dates back to the Franciscans and AD 1250, with the thigh-burning 124-step

staircase

completed in 1348.

Legend holds that the Tiburtine Sibyl told Emperor Augustus that on this lofty spot—today wedged between the Vittoriale and the Capitoline Museums atop the

Capitoline Hill

—would be an "altar to the first among gods," whereupon the emperor had a vision of the heavens opening up and a woman bearing a child in her arms alight on the hilltop.

Augustus dutifully built an aracoeli, or "Altar in the Sky" up here, but Christians later interpreted the prophecy as a reference to their God and replaced it with a church.

Past the unfinished

facade

of rough brick is a

Romanesque interior

hung with chandeliers and slightly baroqued, but retaining a

Cosmatesque pavement

and 22 mismatched

antique columns

recycled from pagan buildings. The elegant

wood ceiling

is carved with naval emblems and motifs to commemorate the great naval victory at Lepanto (1571).

The worn tomb of Giovanni Crivelli to the right of the door was cast by

Donatello,

and the first chapel on the right was frescoed with the Life of St. Bernardino of Siena by Umbrian Renaissance master

Pinturicchio,

one of his greatest masterpieces. There's also a scrap of a Madonna and Child fresco by Roman medeival master Pietro Cavallini, one of his few surviving works.

To the left of the altar with its 10th-century

Madonna d'Aracoeli

painting, is the chapel that once housed a highly venerated statue of the baby Jesus called the

Santo Bambino,

supposedly carved from an olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane and imbued with miraculous powers to heal the sick (he spent half his time making the rounds of Rome's hospitals to visit the sickbeds of the terminally ill), and answer the prayers of children.

The Bambino received thousands of letters from around the world every year—most addressed simply "Santo Bambino, Roma"—which were left in his chapel, unopened, until they were burned so the prayers in them could waft heavenward. Roman children came to recite little speeches or sing poetry in front of the holy little statue, especially at Christmastime.

The Santo Bambino was stolen in 1994. It has since been replaced by a copy.

Piazza Venezia (wedged between the Campidoglio and the Vittoriale)

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