Mon-Sat 7am-noon & 4-7pm, Sun 8am-1.30pm & 4.30-7.30pm. On the far side of the Piazza del Popolo, hard against the city walls, the church of Santa Maria del Popolo holds some of the best Renaissance art of any Roman church. The church was originally erected here in 1099 over the burial place of Nero, in order to sanctify what was believed to be an evil place, but took its present form in the fifteenth century. Inside there are frescoes by Pinturicchio in the first chapel of the south aisle, including a lovely Adoration of Christ, full of tiny details receding into the distance. Pinturicchio also did some work in the Bramante-designed apse, which in turn boasts two fine tombs by Andrea Sansovino. The Chigi chapel, the second from the entrance in the northern aisle, was designed by Raphael for Agostino Chigi in 1516 - though most of the work was actually undertaken by other artists and not finished until the seventeenth century. Michelangelo’s protégé, Sebastiano del Piombo, was responsible for the altarpiece, and two of the sculptures in the corner niches, of justice and Habakkuk, are by Bernini. But it’s two pictures by Caravaggio that attract the most attention, in the left-hand chapel of the north transept. These are typically dramatic works - one, the Conversion of St Paul, showing Paul and horse bathed in a beatific radiance, the other, the Crucifixion of St Peter, showing Peter as an aged but strong figure, dominated by the muscly figures hoisting him up. Like the same artist’s paintings in the churches of San Luigi dei Francesi and Sant’Agostino, both works were considered extremely risqué in their time, their heavy chiaroscuro and deliberate realism too much for the church authorities; one contemporary critic referred to the Conversion of St Paul, a painting dominated by the exquisitely lit horse’s hindquarters, as “an happening in a blacksmith’s shop”.