Chiesa del Gesù

The mother church of the Jesuits and the prototype for Counter-Reformation architecture worldwide — its single wide nave with side chapels, designed by Vignola in 1568 and finished by Giacomo della Porta, became the template for hundreds of Jesuit churches from Krakow to Manila. The crowning glory is Giovanni Battista Gaulli's ceiling fresco The Triumph of the Name of Jesus (1679), an explosive trompe-l'oeil where painted figures spill out of the frame and cast painted shadows across the architecture, dissolving the boundary between the church and heaven. The tomb of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, lies beneath an altar of lapis lazuli, gold, and silver in the left transept. Daily at 17:30, the altarpiece slides away mechanically to reveal his statue beneath.