I adore this Baroque church in Rome. It is over the top, decorated to within an inch of its life, the lily is gilded and then some! But still, I love it for it’s ceiling fresco, with an image of America included.

I’ll be be posting soon about that fresco, but first, from my recent visit to the basilica, please be a bit informed and then overwhelmed with images of richness as I was!

The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius is a Latin Catholic titular church, of deaconry rank, dedicated to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, located in Rome.

Built in Baroque style between 1626 and 1650, the church functioned originally as the chapel of the adjacent Roman College, which moved in 1584 to a new larger building and was renamed the Pontifical Gregorian University.

It is one of the great 17th century preaching churches built by Counter-Reformation orders in the Centro Storico (the others being The Gesù, also of the Jesuits, San Carlo ai Catinari of the Barnabites, Sant’Andrea della Valle of the Theatines, and the Chiesa Nuova of the Oratorians).

Ok, you’ve got some guidance, now let’s go! The day I visited this church most recently I was involved with someone in a relationship worthy of Italian opera, and I temporarily lost my head when it comes to discernment. I found myself embedded in drama. And my photos of this chapel, the Monument to Pope Gregory XV and Cardinal Ludovisi (c. 1709-14) by Le Gros, prove my point. It is unlike me to include my personal drama in this blog, but since I write the blog to remember my life, I wanted to have a record of my temporary insanity.

Haha! Enjoy the pictures of this over the top monument and some others as well, all housed within this church.