Description
It was erected by Pope Sixtus III between 432 and 440 and which he dedicated to the cult of the Madonna, the dogma of the divine motherhood which had just been sanctioned by the Council of Ephesus (431).
Page construction took place on an earlier church, which has been a widespread tradition that inspired the Lady herself appeared in a dream to Pope Liberius and the patrician John and suggesting that the place was miraculously indicated. So when the morning of August 5, an unusual snowfall whitewashed the Esquiline Pope Liberius traced in the snow would the perimeter of the new basilica, built with funding, then John. Of this ancient building remains only one step of the Book, which says that Liberius Pontificalis basilicam appoint his fecit juxta Macellum Livia.
However on August 5 of each year, in commemoration of Our Lady of the Snows, is the evocation of so-called "miracle of the snowfall" during a moving celebration are brought down from the ceiling, a waterfall of white petals.
Even before the year 1000 the church of Santa Maria Maggiore was a cover panels. Characterize this type of roof slanting beams that meet at a point of intersection, which were placed on the roof of tiles. According to tradition, the current coverage was done with the first gold brought from America at the time of Pope Alexander VI.
Inside one of the major works is the beautiful mosaic cycle with stories of the Old and New Testament, dating from the fifth century, soon after the Council of Ephesus, which still shows the late antique art stylistic features: shade, with shades of color transitions are gradual, realistic depiction of space and volume, etc.. More hieratic, and already they are closer to Byzantine mosaics of the triumphal arch, with scenes of Christ dellInfanzia taken from the Apocrypha.
Among the works added over the centuries, the fourteenth-century Chapel of the Nativity report of Arnolfo Exchange (destroyed) and the Sforza Chapel performed on a design by Michelangelo. In the late sixteenth century, Pope Sixtus V had run a cycle of frescoes on the walls which hinder some of the early Christian windows.
In June 1605 Pope Paul V decided to build the Pauline Chapel, a Greek cross and the size of a small church. The architectural part was entrusted to Flame Pontius.
