ROME (AP) – A hidden cloister just a few steps from Rome’s Pantheon is a peaceful place for quiet meditation – if the millions of tourists passing by know it’s there.
Behind a large wooden door, its hidden walls closed to the general public reveal details of the site’s fascinating history, including papal conferences and the Inquisition of Galileo Galilei.
In the center is a pond with goldfish and turtles surrounded by olive trees, two large palm trees and a tree full of bright oranges that the friars use to make marmalade. Well-fed cats live in sunny areas on grass. There are still 20 monks who live in the monastery near the Cloister and do their work.
“It is designed to be a place for prayer and meditation, so in some way it encourages the prayer and meditation of the believers,” said Friar Aucone.
Over the centuries, this space has attracted important people, St. Catherine of Siena and the Renaissance painter Fra Angelico, both buried in the nearby church. It was the site of historic events, including two palaces and the Roman Inquisition.
The name of the basilica next to the cloister, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, reflects its past, a Catholic church dedicated to the Virgin Mary over what was once a pagan temple to the Roman goddess of wisdom, Minerva.
“This building of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is one of the largest and perhaps the most beautiful in all of Rome and it was a center of culture in ancient times and still is today,” said Claudio Strinati, an art historian.
It was a place where people gathered to vote during the reign of Julius Caesar.
Then in the late 1200s, the Dominican Friars built a church on the site. The original cloister was replaced by one designed by the architect Guidetto Giudetti, a pupil of Michelangelo, around 1570.
Some of the paintings that cover the walls and the circular ceiling depict the mysteries of the rosaries and were intended to encourage the contemplative life of the Dominican friars living in the monastery.
Other frescoes, placed in niches and corners around the cloister, reveal the complex history of the area and the activities of its inhabitants.
The palace served as the offices of the Roman Inquisition in the 16th century. Several pictures on medallions on the walls of the cloisters show decapitated Dominican Friars who served as prosecutors with only a neck stump and their heads held in their hands.
“Among other things, there was also the court of the Inquisition where the famous Galileo Galilei was investigated,” explained Strinati.
In a side room of the cloister, Galileo Galilei was forced to renounce his “heretical” view that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun as he stood before the judges of the Inquisition in 1633.
The Renaissance painter, Fra Angelico, a Dominican, lived in the palace while painting frescoes in the Niccoline chapel in the Vatican.
Fra Angelico was 50 years old but looks much older with his medal on the cloister wall. In it a wrinkled old man, in a friar’s habit, bends over a painting.
Another medal shows St. Catherine of Siena, who spent time in the monastery and whose tomb is in the temple near the cloister.
Friar Aucone notes wryly that while they had his body, they had to give his skull to the Dominican Friars in Siena.
The building surrounding the cloister was the site of two papal conferences that elected Pope Eugene IV in 1431 and Pope Nicholas V in 1447. Five popes are buried inside the Basilica.
According to Strinati, hidden gems like the cloister near Santa Maria Sopra Minerva are what make Rome so interesting.
“There is a hidden history so sometimes something is found and all generations, including mine, have discovered things,” he said.
“Generations that come later will continue to discover why it is so big and so deep that so much is secret and hidden. And that is part of its beauty.”
