The Sistine Chapel at Santa Maria Maggiore

Sixtus V Peretti (1585-1590) was the most energetic of all the popes, bringing water back to Rome with the aqueduct Felice, raising the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, finishing Michelangelo and della Porta’s dome of St. Peter’s, putting up three more obelisks, creating six new major arteries, and, most dear to Romans, tracking down the brigands who had made travel so perilous.

The pope also had his architect Domenico Fontana make a Chapel for the Sacrament (and a tomb for him) at Santa Maria Maggiore. Pope Theodore (642-649) brought the remains of Saint Jerome and the Holy Crib, the Santa Culla, from Jerusalem to safeguard them from the Muslims.In 642 a chapel was built for them outside the Maggiore, as a replica of the nativity grotto at Bethlehem. Arnolfo di Cambio decorated the chapel1300 with the first marble replica of Francis’ Christmas creche. Sixtus engaged Fontana to transfer the Presipio of the Santa Culla to the crypt of his new chapel. Fontana, who had successfully moved the mammoth obelisk ofSt. Peter’s, encased the chapel in a mammoth scaffolding. The structure collapsed in transit, destroying all the ceiling mosaics and marble pavement.But the walls and the altar survived, as did Arnolfo’s manger scene.

The crypt became home to Arnolfo’s statues, the tomb of three popes, Honorius III, Pius V, and of course Sixtus, and Pietro Bernini’s statue of Saint Caetan and the baby Jesus. Above the crypt is the Sicilian Ludovico el Duca’s gilded bronze replica of the Presipio.

The statues of Pius V and Sixtus V are on opposite walls, by Valsodo.The reliefs by Cesare Nebbia and Giovanni Guerra next to Sixtus depict his accomplishments, the most interesting his extermination of the road robbers. The relief to the left of Pius depicts the victory over the Muslim fleet at Lepanto.