The Most Beautiful Churches in Lazio
8 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful churches in Lazio are San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Sant'Ignazio Church and Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. The list covers 8 churches. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Lazio's churches are, above all, the churches of Rome, and no other city has been rebuilt for faith for so long. Constantine gave the bishops of Rome their first great basilicas in the fourth century, popes reused the marble and columns of the ancient city for a thousand years, and from the Renaissance onward papal patronage drew the best architects in Europe to a single place. The result is a city where an early Christian mosaic, a Renaissance experiment and a Baroque illusion can stand a few streets apart.
The Archbasilica of St John Lateran is the cathedral of Rome, the mother church of Catholicism, its nave remodelled by Borromini. Santa Maria Maggiore keeps fifth-century mosaics along its nave, among the oldest in any Roman church. The Pantheon, an imperial temple consecrated as a church in 609, survived precisely because it changed its purpose, and its concrete dome is still the largest unreinforced one in the world.
The smaller churches show the architects at their most inventive. Bramante's Tempietto, set in a courtyard on the Janiculum, revived the perfect round temple of antiquity around 1502. Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane fits an oval dome of interlocking coffers into a tiny site, and his Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza ends in a spiralling lantern. In Sant'Ignazio, Andrea Pozzo painted a ceiling that opens into the sky and a dome that does not exist.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane | Church building | |
| 2 | Sant'Ignazio Church | Church building | |
| 3 | Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore | Church building | ✓ |
| 4 | Tempietto | Church building | |
| 5 | Pantheon, Rome | Archaeological site | |
| 6 | Archbasilica of St. John Lateran | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 7 | Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls | Church building | ✓ |
| 8 | Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza | Church building |
01 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.902° N 12.491° E
Alexkom000 · CC BY 4.0 The undulating façade, with its concave and convex bays stacked in two storeys, was the last thing Borromini worked on: it was still unfinished when he died in 1667, and the work was completed by his nephew Bernardo, continuing until 1682. Over the main door, winged herms frame a statue of St Charles Borromeo by Antonio Raggi. The church stands on one corner of the Quattro Fontane crossroads, where four fountains are set diagonally into the corners of the buildings, and a few steps away is Bernini's Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, so the two great rivals of Roman Baroque can be compared within a single short walk.
Did you know? Groups of three recur throughout the interior, from the angels in the pendentives to the rows of coffers, in tribute to the Trinity venerated by the order.
02 Sant'Ignazio Church
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola in Campo Marzio
Italy · 0.2 km from Rome41.899° N 12.480° E
Fiat 500e · CC BY 4.0 Pozzo, a Jesuit lay brother, painted the nave vault around 1685, presenting the work of the order spreading to the four continents. The money for a real dome had run out, so in 1685 he supplied a painted one on a large canvas over the crossing; it was later destroyed by fire and faithfully reproduced in 1823 by Francesco Manno from Pozzo's own drawings. Pozzo also painted the apse with scenes from the saint's life. The rest of the interior is rich with coloured marble, gilding and stucco: Pierre Le Gros carved the marble relief of St Aloysius Gonzaga in glory and the monument to Gregory XV and Cardinal Ludovisi, and Aloysius Gonzaga, Robert Bellarmine and John Berchmans are buried here.
Did you know? Ludovisi first chose a site near the Jesuit novitiate on the Quirinal, but the pope objected that a tall church there would block the view.
03 Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.898° N 12.499° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
L'Ospite Inatteso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Outside, the medieval façade mosaics are screened by a loggia designed by Ferdinando Fuga and completed in 1743, and the 14th-century bell tower, about 75 m high, is the tallest in Rome. The Marian column in the square in front was put up in 1614 to designs by Carlo Maderno. Pope Francis was buried here in 2025, in the side aisle between the Sforza and Pauline chapels.
Did you know? The column in the piazza is the only intact column surviving from the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine in the Roman Forum.
04 Tempietto
Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio
Italy · 1.6 km from Rome41.889° N 12.466° E
Sailko · CC BY-SA 3.0 San Pietro in Montorio sits on the slope of the Janiculum, the ridge on the west bank of the Tiber above the old quarter of Trastevere. Rome, the Italian capital, gathers nearly three thousand years of building within its walls; the Tempietto is one of its smallest and most perfect monuments.
Did you know? Its sixteen columns are of grey granite, while the rest of the stonework is travertine; Vitruvius had praised sixteen as a perfect number.
05 Pantheon, Rome
Pantheon
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.899° N 12.477° E
Image by falcon505 from Pixabay The building survived because it never stopped being used. In 609 the emperor Phocas gave it to Pope Boniface IV, who consecrated it as the church of Saint Mary and the Martyrs, and it is still a church. Among the tombs in its chapels are those of the painter Raphael and the first two kings of united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II and Umberto I. Outside, Piazza della Rotonda has a fountain topped by an Egyptian obelisk.
Did you know? In 663 the Byzantine emperor Constans II stripped the gilded bronze roof tiles and shipped them toward Constantinople.
06 Archbasilica of St. John Lateran
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
Italy · 2.5 km from Rome41.886° N 12.506° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0 Older layers survive beneath the Baroque. The floor is medieval Cosmatesque inlay, the Gothic ciborium over the high altar dates from 1369, and the 13th-century cloister, surrounded by columns of inlaid marble, is the work of the Vassalletto family and the Cosmati. A 4th-century statue of Constantine stands in the portico. Outside, on the square, rises the Lateran Obelisk, commissioned by the pharaoh Thutmose III for Karnak and the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world. The basilica and its properties are part of the Historic Centre of Rome World Heritage Site.
Did you know? Popes lived in the neighbouring Lateran Palace for roughly a thousand years, until the papacy moved to Avignon in 1309, and five ecumenical councils met there.
07 Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls
Basilica di San Paolo fuori le mura
Italy · 4.4 km from Rome41.859° N 12.477° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by loveombra from Pixabay The basilica is one of Rome's four major papal basilicas and a Benedictine abbey church. It stands on Italian soil but belongs to the Holy See. Its Holy Door is opened only in jubilee years, and in October 2025 King Charles III attended an ecumenical service here and was made a confrater of the abbey.
08 Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
Chiesa di Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
Italy · 0.5 km from Rome41.898° N 12.475° E
Image by ivosilvestro from Pixabay The church is dedicated to Saint Ivo, patron saint of lawyers, and its decoration records the popes who paid for it: the bees of the Barberini family of Urban VIII appear on the lantern, while the mountains and star of the Chigi family appear inside. The church was consecrated in 1660. The main altar, designed by Giovanni Battista Contini, dates from 1684, and its altarpiece was begun by Pietro da Cortona and completed after his death by Giovanni Ventura Borghesi. The Palazzo della Sapienza, which once housed the university, is now home to the State Archives of Rome.
Did you know? The dome is a deliberate illusion: its six-lobed interior shape is hidden outside by a curving drum and stepped roof rising to the lantern.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful churches in Lazio?
- On our list, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane ranks first, followed by Sant'Ignazio Church and Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
- What is the cathedral of Rome?
- The Archbasilica of St John Lateran, not St Peter's. It is the seat of the Pope as Bishop of Rome and carries the title of mother and head of all churches in the city and the world.
- Why is the Pantheon a church?
- The Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who consecrated it in 609 as Santa Maria ad Martyres. Continuous use as a church is the main reason the ancient temple survives almost intact.
- Is the dome of Sant'Ignazio real?
- No. The church was never given its planned dome, so in 1685 Andrea Pozzo painted one in perspective on a flat canvas. Seen from a marked spot on the floor, it looks fully three-dimensional.
- How many churches are on this list in Lazio?
- The list covers 8 churches.