Sooner or later, if you pass in front of Castel Sant'Angelo and you go to St. Peter's square, you will see a big building that from the outside, with its portal and façade, might look like a church, but which was instead a large hospital. It is the Monumental Complex of Santo Spirito in Sassia. The entrance is dominated by a wonderful marble portal, called 'Entrance to Heaven' and is attributed to the school of Andrea Bregno. The Santo Spirito in Sassia complex in Rome was built during the first decades of 700 AD, in the period in which the king of the Saxons, Ine of Wessex, gave life to the Schola Saxonum, from which the term Saxia derives. The Schola Saxonum was conceived by the king as a sort of welcome center, a hostel for (Anglo-)Saxon pilgrims, for his compatriots, who every year came to Rome on pilgrimage to visit the tomb of St. Peter. In 1198 Pope Innocent III was granted permission by King John Lackland to build a hospital on the site of the former hostel; the new institution was placed under the protection of the Holy Spirit. The reconstruction works were necessary following the fires and looting that had seriously damaged the structures of the complex. The Pope decided to instruct the Order of the Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit to found a sort of hospital to house the poor, the infirm and protect all children unwanted and abandoned by their mothers. In 1470 a fire damaged the hospital. Pope Sixtus IV realized that the old structure was more appropriate to a jail, than to a place where the sick could recover their health and he decided to build a brand new complex. The new hospital was completed in 1478. The architect Baccio Pontelli was involved in the project. Corsia Sistina consisted of a very long rectangular hall having at its centre an octagonal dome. The cycle of frescoes of the the Corsia Sistina is due to the initiative of Sixtus IV and depicts the history of the ancient hospital and its Sistine refoundation It had a façade at the end of the hall which was reconstructed in 1938 based on one of the 46 frescoes in the interior of the building which portray events associated with the history of the hospital. The Corsia Sistina is divided in two by an octagonal lantern and houses inside an altar attributed to architect Andrea Palladio and a painting by Carlo Maratta. During the pontificate of Pius V, the complex was enlarged and the Palazzo del Commendatore was ordered and built, the work of the architect Giovanni Lippi known as Nanni di Baccio Bigio. In the nineteenth century, the two wings that make up the Sistine Corsia were called Sala Lancisi and Sala Baglivi, named after two well-known doctors. It is closed to the public and cannot be visited. On one very rare occasion, we happened to find an open door and we snuck inside to take some photos. Interesting,

This is a massive complex originally built in the 8th century to provide shelter and assistance to Germanic pilgrims. Later it became a hospital (one of the oldest in Europe). On the side, look for the “baby hatch” where abandoned babies were left (there a big wooden drum, behind a metal grate, where you could leave an unwanted baby; next to it is a little place for donations). Currently the complex is under restoration.