Chiesa di Trinità dei Monti, Rome

Trinità dei Monti is the Catholic church at the head of the stairway that runs down to Piazza di Spagna. Its pale façade, framed by paired bell towers, belongs to a church-and-convent ensemble whose character has long been shaped by France. French king Charles the Eighth established the foundation in fourteen ninety-three, and building began in fifteen oh two beside the monastery.

The original scheme used a French Gothic manner, with pointed arches, before later rebuilding gave the church its Renaissance identity. The Sack of Rome damaged the complex in fifteen twenty-seven; enlargement followed with support from French cardinals. Giacomo Della Porta and Carlo Maderno designed the façade, completed in fifteen seventy, and Pope Sixtus the Fifth consecrated the church in fifteen eighty-five.

Inside, the building has a single nave with six side chapels. Its crossing vault preserves an exceptional fragment of French late Gothic craft: interlaced ribs, a form found nowhere else in Rome. Notice too the obelisk in the piazza before the church.

Erected here under Pope Pius the Sixth, it is a Roman imperial-era imitation of an Egyptian obelisk. The complex is now entrusted to the Emmanuel Community and remains among Rome’s Francophone Catholic churches.