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S. MARIA IN ARACOELI

Built above the temple of Juno Moneta (ie warning) and place of a monastery of Greek monks [seventh century] that will successively to the Benedictines under the name of S. Maria in Capitolio, also located on this hill was the mint of Ancient Rome, for which our Italian word "money" is derived from this temple of Juno.
Should the title in Aracoeli, as popular in early 1300, the apparition of the Virgin that here was the Emperor Octavian. La Sibilla Tiburtina, consulted by the emperor Octavian Augustus, announced that "the sky will come a king who will reign in human form for centuries and will judge the world." Then the emperor, who was in his room, is witnessing an apparition: a virgin on the altar holding a baby and a voice announces that that is the altar of the "Lord of Heaven." Octavian Augustus, fell to his knees in worship (see picture).
Christian communities in the Middle Ages, they wanted to interpret a posteriori view this as a proclamation of the coming of the Messiah.
Legend Augustus was very impressed by the vision, so did spend just near his room, an altar to the "Lord of Heaven" near future. So the word "Ara Coeli", meaning "Altar of Heaven," derives from this altar at the chamber of the emperor, altar placed as the first nucleus of the church, built a few centuries later. The third column of the row of the left, up, we read an ancient engraving: "A cubicule Augustorum" (see photo). It is believed that this column, which today supports the nave, existed from before the church, and originally sorreggesse the apartment of the Emperor.
In 1250 Innocent IV granted the church to the Franciscan Friars Minor who rebuilt in the Romanesque-Gothic style in 1285-87 to the consecration of 1291. The work was completed with the rapid flight of 122 steps [Lorenzo di Simone Andreozzi] which was inaugurated in 1348 by Cola di Rienzo. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa will work conducted in 1467-72, Pius IV in 1564 demolished the apse fresco by Pietro Cavallini, abolished the choir and the inlet side. The external current prospectus, in a brick shell, dates the thirteenth and welcomes three portals on which there are many windows. The interior is distributed over three naves with round arches divided by twenty-two ancient columns. The coffered wooden ceiling decorated with stucco Bernini school, was made by Caesar and Sermoneta Drill the center of the Virgin and Child, in thanksgiving for the victory at the Battle of Lepanto. The floor cosmatesco was built in the style of figurative Cosmati brothers, a family of marble workers particularly active in the twelfth century as witnessed also by the two pulpits with mosaics by Lorenzo and Jacopo Cosma of 1200 placed the left and right transept. (see here and here )