Chiesa di Sant' Ignazio di Loyola

Nancy bailed out on this and the next church to spend more time at the Doria Pamphilj.

The church is set in a small piazza of gorgeous buldings. It is beautiful inside, but the most interesting feature is the "dome".

Look at the ceiling of the nave overhead. It is breathtakingly, dizzyingly, swimmingly decorated in a riotous, colorful, and amazingly masterful tromp l’oeil 1685 fresco depicting St. Ignatius and his Works by perhaps the greatest baroque master of perspective there ever was, Andrea Pozzo (who was himself a lay brother of the Jesuit order).

Find the first marble disc set in the floor of the nave, then look back up. This is the spot from which the perspective is designed to all line up and cause the ceiling to literally seem to extend right up into the heavens. Now continue down the nave to the second marble disc set in the floor and take a look at the dome over the crossing up ahead, dimly illuminated by a golden light. Now keep walking toward the transept, but keep your eye on that "dome." The closer you get, the odder and odder it looks. That's because it isn't a dome at all. It's actually another masterpiece of trompe-l'oeil, painted on a flat surface by Andrea Pozzo, on canvas this time.

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