Let me start with the thing that matters if you are planning a visit: the church of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza is closed, and has been for years. Restoration has been under way since 2016, the agreement to reopen it to the public was signed in July 2025, and as I write the rectory still describes it as closed to visitors.
Even so, it is still worth going, and this is the only church in Rome about which I would write a sentence like that.
Because the most famous part of this building, the spiral lantern that looks like nothing else in European architecture, is not seen from the inside. It is seen from the courtyard, and from the rooftops of half of Rome.
A church at the end of a university courtyard
Sant’Ivo does not face onto any street. It stands at the far end of the courtyard of the Palazzo della Sapienza, on Corso del Rinascimento, two hundred metres from Piazza Navona, and anyone walking past the gate without knowing what is inside keeps going.
That palace was the seat of the Studium Urbis, the university of Rome, and Sant’Ivo was its chapel: a university church, not a parish. The name Sapienza stayed with the university, which is now elsewhere; the palace houses the State Archives of Rome.
Borromini was appointed architect of the Sapienza in 1632, the year before the commission came from Pope Urban VIII Barberini, and the church was built between 1642 and 1660, under three different popes. You can see it: the facade and the dome carry the insignia of different papal families, and that is the kind of detail usually taken for decoration when it is in fact the chronology of the building site written on the walls.
The star-shaped plan, and why it is not a whim
The church has a six-pointed plan, obtained by crossing two triangles. It is the figure of the six-pointed star, and the current readings connect it to the symbol of divine wisdom, fitting for a university chapel. As with the lantern, though, these are interpretations, not a programme written down by Borromini.
But the point is not the symbol. What makes this plan different from any other centrally planned church? The fact that it rises.
In a normal church the plan sits on the ground and the dome is another thing, placed on top. Not here: the six alternating points, three concave apses and three convex, carry on upwards without a break, and the dome is not a cap set above but the same figure closing at the top. There is no drum, no pause. Whoever walks in sees a single space that twists and climbs.
The interior is white, with stuccoes of stars, cherubs and the patrons’ coats of arms, lit by high windows that keep the lower part in shadow and the vault in light.
The lantern, the only one of its kind
And at the top? Where any other seventeenth-century architect would have put a round little temple with a cupola, Borromini put a spiral.
It is a stepped cone that screws in on itself, closed at the top by a crown of iron flames, the sphere and the cross. It has no precedent in Italian architecture, and the hypotheses about where it came from have been chasing each other for centuries: the Mesopotamian ziggurat seen in prints, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the Barberini bee in profile, the snail, the tower of Babel.
None of these readings is proven, and anyone who tells you one of them as the official explanation is simplifying.
What can be said is simpler and more useful: the spiral is the only part of the church you can see from a distance, and it is what makes Sant’Ivo recognisable in any Roman panorama taken from above, wedged among the roofs two minutes from Piazza Navona.
How to see it right now
The restoration is funded by Italy’s recovery plan and covers the whole complex. On 24 July 2025 the Ministry of Culture, the Diocese of Rome and the State Archives signed a ten-year agreement handing the Archives the management of public openings, with free admission: the press reported the reopening as due by the end of 2025.
At the check on 30 August 2026, however, the rectory’s website still describes the church as closed for works, with mass celebrated in the rectory hall rather than in the church. The two pieces of information do not contradict each other: the agreement exists, the announced date has passed, regular opening is not yet in place.
In the meantime, here is what you can actually do:
The courtyard of the Sapienza. It is the entrance to the State Archives, at Corso del Rinascimento 40, and from there you see the concave facade, the drum and the whole spiral: three quarters of what makes this building famous. The hours are the Archives’ hours, so weekdays and working hours: check the site of the State Archives of Rome first.
From above. The lantern rises over the roofs from any panoramic terrace in the historic centre, and from a distance you recognise it even without looking for it.
Special openings. They are how this church has let itself be seen in recent years, and they go through the channels of the State Archives and the Ministry: worth checking if you are in Rome on days of cultural events.
Practical information
Details checked on 30 August 2026 on the rectory’s website and on the Rome tourism board’s page.
Status. Church closed to visitors for restoration. The courtyard can be crossed during the State Archives’ opening hours.
Tickets. You pay nothing today because you cannot go in, and when it reopens the 2025 agreement provides for free admission.
Address. The church is at Corso del Rinascimento 40. Mass is held in the rectory hall, entrance at Via del Teatro Valle 33.
Getting there. Three minutes on foot from Piazza Navona, eight from the Pantheon.
How long. Ten minutes for the courtyard. Half an hour if you find it open.
Before you set off. Phone or write to the rectory, or check the channels of the State Archives of Rome: it is the only way to know whether you can get in on the day.
Two hundred metres away is Piazza Navona, where the Stadium of Domitian still lies beneath the square: it can be visited on a guided tour of the underground, which is the simplest way not to leave empty-handed if you find Sant’Ivo closed.
What to see nearby
Sant’Ivo sits inside the densest quarter of Borromini’s Rome. A couple of minutes away are Piazza Navona with the Fountain of the Four Rivers and the facade of Sant’Agnese in Agone, which is his; ten minutes away, beyond Via Giulia, is Borromini’s perspective gallery at Palazzo Spada.
On the Quirinal, on the other side of the centre, stands San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane: the church you really can visit, and the one where Borromini had prepared his own tomb.
For the character of the man who designed this spiral, there is Bernini and Borromini, and to see the rest of what he left in the city there is the itinerary of Borromini’s works in Rome.
Photo credits. Courtyard: Mstyslav Chernov, CC BY-SA 3.0. Dome from inside: Nicholas Hartmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lantern above the rooftops: Nhartmannphotos, CC BY-SA 4.0. All from Wikimedia Commons.
