The church has functioned since then as the university chapel for the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (aka the Angelicum). It has had a long history. Fortunately the Dominicans were able to re-acquire the property after it was taken by the government amid the strife of the Masonic Revolution of 1870. Expropriation was the result of laws designed to suppress the religious orders.
The Interior
The chapel was built by care of the Dominican Pope, Pius V. Construction began in 1569 of the chapel and eventually also an attached convent, originally intended for Dominican nuns. The original plan was from Giacomo della Porta, although over the years various architects were involved. Construction lasted until 1663. Nicola Torriani worked on the interior.
The church is known for its designs by Bernini, that date from 1649. His plans included the first chapel on the right upon entering. The altar here with its sculpture group is very much in the style of Bernini and is reputed to be by him or his pupil, Antonio Raggi. The altarpiece statues depict Christ meeting St. Mary Magdalene after His Resurrection. The work is called Noli me tangere (Latin for "Touch me not"), in reference to the words spoken by Our Lord to Mary Magdalene when she recognized Him after His Resurrection (John 20:17).
The majestic ceiling painting is entitled the Apotheosis of St. Dominic, created in 1674 by Domenico Maria Canuti. The tompe-l'oeil framing is by Enrico Haffner. Noteworthy is the altarpiece in the third chapel on the south side, by Pier Francesco Mola, depicting the vision of St. Dominic. In the second chapel on the north side is Francesco Allegrini's Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine, painted in 1532. In the third chapel on north side is the Madonna and Child by Benozzo Gozzoli, a pupil of Fra Angelico, completed in 1460.
The Exterior and Staircase
Vincenzo della Greca and his brother Felice constructed the travertine facade, completed in 1646. The front facade showcases four statues. Two upper statues depict St. Dominic and Pope St. Sixtus II. They are by Marcantonio Canini.
The two lower statues depict St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Peter of Verona. These were sculpted by Stefano Maderno, one of the greatest sculptors of that generation.
The church has a remarkable unity of design, evident in all the beautiful old churches in Italy. One of its greatest treasures is actually the exterior curved double staircase and balustrade leading to the main entrance, built in 1654 by the architect Orazio Torriani.
The staircase was memorialized by American painter John Singer Sargent, who while visiting Rome in 1906 was so enraptured that he decided to sketch and paint it. The following year he wrote: "I did in Rome a study of a magnificent curved staircase and balustrade, leading to a grand facade that would reduce a millionaire to a worm..." The oil on canvas painting can be seen in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University.
The Original Nuns
The chapel is attached to the old monastery that is under the same name. Today Dominican friars live and teach here, with classrooms mostly on the main level. But the property was originally built by care of the Dominican Pope St. Pius V, who intended it for the Dominican nuns of Pope St. Sixtus II, the same pope mentioned in the Roman Canon.
When the Angelicum moved in, the remaining nuns moved to the Church of San Sisto Vecchio, where Pope St. Sixus II is today entombed. It was St. Dominic himself who established his nuns at this other location as his first foundation in Rome.
The establishment of this community was done at the behest of Pope Honorius II who entrusted the reform of the monastery of St. Sixtus to the female Dominicans. Just before that, in 1219, the same pope invited Dominic and his male companions to take up residence at Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill.
It was after this that they founded a convent and studium on June 5, 1222, thus forming the original Dominican studium out of wich the sixteenth century Angelicum was born at the Dominican friary at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.
The community of nuns at St. Sixtus flourished under the immediate jurisdiction of the Dominicans. A house of noble ladies was thus set up there, dedicated to the religious life, who until that time had lived in various convents of the Eternal City, but without the regular discipline in accordance with their religious state.
St. Dominic gave them a rule of life, known since under the name of "Constitutions of St. Sixtus of Rome." This community, which a month after its foundation had more than a hundred nuns, soon became noted, thanks to the loving care of the holy patriarch St. Dominic, for its holiness and the regularity of its religious discipline.
But time, which tests the greatest human institutions, overthrows empires and abolishes kingdoms, does not spare even the dwellings of the servants of God. Thus, over the ages, the monastery of St. Sixtus became almost in ruin, while its holy inhabitants, reduced to extreme poverty by the troubles of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, saw their members greatly reduced.
The situation was almost desperate when, in 1566, Providence gave the nuns a great benefactor in the person of one of their brothers in Saint Dominic, Cardinal Michel Ghislieri, who, having ascended the papal throne, took the name Pius V and decided to come to the aid of his sisters in distress.
For this purpose, the Pope had a magnificent monastery built in the holiest part of the city, in this region called Magnapolis, which overlooks the Roman Forum and those of Augustus and Trajan. It is there that Paulus Emile, in the 2nd century BC, is said to have built his large public baths called by the Latins Balnea Pauli, a name that the moderns corrupted into that of Magnapolis. This last expression, although incorrect, did not fail to mean Neapolis, which means new city.
Visiting the Chapel
Hopefully one day the chapel will be open every day for visitors. Today is is open generally only open for special Masses celebrated here each year, such as a Mass to inaugurate the academic year as well as the closing of the school year. There has also been an annual Corpus Christi procession organized by students. By popular claim there is an occasional Missa Cantata liturgy sung with a trope of plainchant celebrated Iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum, in the hallowed Dominican Rite.
