Italy Traveller Guide

Daily 8am-1pm & 4-7.30pm. A few steps left from the start of Via dei Coronari takes you down Via dell’Anima, where the church of Santa Maria dell’Anima is another darkly cosy Roman church, crammed into a seemingly impossibly small space. Nowadays it’s the German national church in Rome, and a richly decorated affair, almost square in shape, with a protruding main sanctuary flanked by Renaissance tombs. The one on the right, a beautiful, rather depressing concoction, is that of the last non-Italian pope before John Paul II, the Dutchman Adrian VI, who died in 1523, while at the far end, above the altar there is a dark and glowing Virgin with Saints by Giulio Romano.