Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Rome

Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione is a Catholic church in Casal Bruciato, on Via dei Crispolti. Designed by Saverio Busiri Vici, it was built from nineteen sixty-five to nineteen seventy-one and consecrated in October of that later year. Notice the façade’s striking anatomical idea: the design turns Christ’s chest into architecture, with the sternum expressed on the façade and the heart aligned with the high altar.

Along the church’s flank, a cylindrical bell tower is assembled from columns and projecting concrete elements. The building’s style is modernism and Brutalism; Brutalism is architecture that gives concrete and structural mass an emphatic presence. Inside, decoration is deliberately sparse, but a sculptural group of the Visitation by Vincenzo Mussner of Ortisei provides a focused devotional image.