Chiesa di Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri

The St. Anne of the Grooms's Church is site in the Vatican City, near St. Anne Gate. The oval building, first of this kind in Roman architecture of the sixteenth century, was built to a design by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, under Pope Pius IV (1570) and the Confraternity of the Grooms (devoted to Saint Anne and the repose of the souls of the dead). The Church was completed in the eighteenth century, when they were built the facade, the dome and the frescoes inside. The exterior is characterized by a facade flanked by two towers, each of which presents the belfry open on four sides with a lancet and a bulb cover, and ends with a pediment supported by Tuscan columns and two statues of angels. The interior consists of a single portal topped by a round depicting the Madonna and St. Anne. The interior is covered with elliptical lowered dome, the center of which there is a stucco depicting the Dove of the Holy Spirit. The walls are punctuated by eight Corinthian columns framing scenes from the Saint Anne's life, byIgnazio Stern, and the four rectangular rooms. The square apse, is covered with vault richly decorated with stucco. The main altar, in polychrome marble, houses the altarpiece depicting St. Anne and the child Madonna, by Arturo Viligiardi (1927). The Church was famous in papal Rome for the so-called "panze's procession", women in labor, which took place on July 26, the day of the St. Anne's liturgical feast.