Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva site features

Michelangelo's Cristo della Minerva

The standing Christ of 1521, beside the high altar. One of relatively few Michelangelo sculptures in Rome, and in a church most visitors to the Pantheon never enter.

The Carafa Chapel

Second chapel in the right transept, with Filippino Lippi's fresco cycle of 1488–1493, inaugurated in 1493.

The tomb of Saint Catherine of Siena

Doctor of the Church (1347–1380) and a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, buried here.

The tomb of Fra Angelico

The Dominican friar and painter (c. 1395–1455) lies in the church of his own order.

The Medici popes

Ornate monuments to Leo X and Clement VII, designed by Baccio Bandinelli.

The star-vault

Blue, gilded with stars, ribbed in brilliant red. The single reason to stand on the central axis before doing anything else.

The elephant outside

The Pulcino della Minerva: designed by Bernini and executed by his pupil Ercole Ferrata in 1667, an elephant carrying the shortest of Rome's eleven Egyptian obelisks — said to be one of two moved from Sais, cut under the pharaoh Apries (589–570 BCE). It is free, it is in the open piazza, and it is there at any hour.

The room where Galileo abjured

Not open, but worth knowing you are standing beside it. On 22 June 1633, in a room of the convent, Galileo renounced the Copernican theory.