The Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major

One of the four patriarchal Basilicas of Rome, founded, according to legend, on the spot of a miraculous snowfall on 5 August 356, during the reign of Pope Liberio and for these reasons called Basilica Liberiana and Santa Maria ad Nives. It is more likely that it was built in the Fifth Century under Sixtus III and modified at the end of 1200 under Pope Nicholas IV with the addition of the transept. Between 1500 and 1600, Sixtus V and Paul V added their respective chapels (Sistina and Paolina), while between 1741 and 1743 Ferdinando Fuga created the facade.

THINGS TO KNOW: The ceiling, the only one of its kind from the 1400s left in Rome, except for that of San Marco, was built at the end of the 1400s under Alessandro VI Borgia, and was decorated with the first shipment of gold from the newly discovered America.