The Church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti

The Church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti, often called merely the Trinità dei Monti, is situated above the famous Spanish Steps, in Piazza di Spagna, and is one of the five French-speaking Catholic churches of Rome.

The oldest part in Gothic style was built between 1502 and 1519 and is covered by ogival cross vaults. Around the middle of the 16th century, a new block was added to the Gothic nave, covered by a barrel vault and closed by a façade decorated with two symmetrical bell towers by Giacomo Della Porta and Carlo Maderno.

The interior consists of a single large nave, on which there are six side chapels decorated with fine works of art, such as the famous Deposition by Daniele da Volterra, Michelangelo's apprentice, whose portrait he painted in his other work preserved inside the church, the Assumption.

The Convent, founded by Francesco di Paola in 1494 and financed by the crown of France, stands on the right side of the church.  The "Royal Convent of the Trinità dei Monti" had a splendid epoch between the 16th and 17th centuries, of which memory remains in its decorative aspect: the frescoes in the cloister, with a didactic cycle dedicated to the life of the Holy Founder and a gallery of portraits of the kings of France; the cryptic anamorphosis of Emmanuel Maignan and François Nicéron; the astrolabe made by Maignan; the scenic Marriage at Cana painted in the refectory, with admirable illusionistic artifices by the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo, the fresco of the Mater Admirabilis, the work of the nun Pauline Perdreau in the mid-19th century, in one of the corridors of the cloister of the Convent, at the time inhabited by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.