The façade of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major consists of a portico and a Loggia of Blessings. It was built as part of a major restoration and renovation campaign of the entire Basilica, entrusted by Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758) to the Florentine architect Ferdinando Fuga, in preparation for the Holy Year of 1750.
The Loggia opens onto the square in front through a triumphal arch motif, as if it were a cloak for the Marian Basilica. The new frame for the medieval façade mosaic connects the Canons’ Hall, built at the behest of Paul V (right side, 1605) and Clement XII (left side, 1721; completed by Benedict XIV in 1743), and provides an impressive stage for the Papal Blessing.
The four white marble angels are the work of Pietro Bracci, one of the most influential sculptors in eighteenth-century Rome – indeed, he is the author of the Ocean, the central sculpture of the Trevi Fountain. Together with a group of putti modelled and cast in bronze, with crown, palm and cross, the monumental angels originally surmounted the canopy of the High Altar, conceived by Ferdinando Fuga himself. In 1932, the angels were removed and placed on the Loggia of Blessings.
In the square in front of the Basilica stands the Marian Column, known as the Column of Peace, a fluted monolith in Proconnesian marble with a Corinthian capital, from the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum. Crowned with a bronze sculpture of the Immaculate Conception (Guillaume Berthelot, 1614), the elegant work was conceived by Paul V as a monument to peace, and provided the model for many Marian Columns in Europe (Munich, Vienna, Prague, and the Column of the Immaculate Conception in Piazza di Spagna, in Rome).
The Marian Column dialogues with the obelisk of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran on the other side of Via Merulana (formerly Via Gregoriana), reaffirming the importance of the two shrines for popes and pilgrims throughout the centuries.
_______________________
Photo 1: Overall view of the Loggia
Photo 2: Pope Leo XIV in the act of greeting and blessing the faithful gathered in the square, on the occasion of taking Possession of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major (25 May 2025)
Photo 3: Giacomo Fontana, overall view of the baldachin, surmounted by Pietro Bracci’s four angels, 1833
