It is one of the major basilicas in Rome along with St. Peter’s, Saint John Lateran and St. Paul Outside-the-Walls. In these four churches, during the Jubilee years, the Holy Doors, which are always on the right of the main portals, are opened; to obtain indulgences it is necessary to pass through all of them.
Santa Maria Maggiore was erected in AD 440 on the foundations of another church built by Pope Liberius and the patrician Giovanni, to whom the Madonna herself appeared to show them the place to build a church in her honour.
The sign was to be the snowfall on August 5th in Rome, precisely on the Esquiline Hill: here the Pope traced the perimeter of the church, still today called “Basilica Liberiana.” Every summer, on the occasion of the Feast Day of Our Lady of the Snows, the miracle of the snowfall is commemorated in a very popular event.
Among the works preserved inside, the most significant is the cycle of mosaics adorning the nave and the triumphal arch: they date back to the time of the construction of the church under Sixtus and narrate episodes of the life of Christ in Byzantine style.
In the Sistine Chapel, built by Pope Sixtus V in the sixteenth century, there is a cast of the Adoration of the Magi by Arnolfo di Cambio (the original is kept in the museum of the church), while the Pauline Chapel, commissioned by Pope Paul V, houses paintings by Cavalier d’Arpino, Guido Reni and Lanfranco. The Sforza Chapel was designed by Michelangelo, while the “Loggia delle Benedizioni” was designed by Ferdinando Fuga in 1741.