Carlo Maderno’s remodeled façade for Santa Susanna (Rome) was completed, becoming a widely cited early-Baroque model for later Italian church-front compositions (stacked orders, emphatic center, increased plasticity).
With Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s financial support, Giovanni Battista Soria erected the façade of Santa Maria della Vittoria (Rome), explicitly reflecting Maderno’s nearby Santa Susanna and helping consolidate a recognizable Roman Baroque façade language.
Girolamo Rainaldi initiated the rebuilding campaign for Sant’Agnese in Agone (Piazza Navona, Rome) for Innocent X, setting in motion a major multi-architect façade campaign that would pass through several hands.
Innocent X reassigned Sant’Agnese in Agone to Francesco Borromini, who reworked the façade concept (including the relationship of concave front and convex steps), marking a key moment in the evolution of high-Baroque façade plasticity.
Under Pope Alexander VII, Pietro da Cortona began the theatrical façade and piazza intervention at Santa Maria della Pace (Rome), using a projecting semicircular portico and stage-like urban framing to intensify processional and visual effects.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini received the commission for the Jesuit novitiate church Sant’Andrea al Quirinale (Rome); the project’s compact urban façade and forecourt arrangement became influential in later Roman church-front scenography.
Carlo Rainaldi produced an early design drawing (project) for the façade of Santa Maria in Campitelli (Rome), documenting the exploratory design phase before the final built solution.
The rebuilding campaign for Santa Maria in Campitelli (Rome) began under Alexander VII; the project’s later façade and monumental stairway were conceived to give a strong public presence to a revered Marian image and its cult.
Work began on Santa Maria in Montesanto (Rome) at Piazza del Popolo, part of Alexander VII’s monumental framing of the Corso’s northern entrance; the façade campaign was central to achieving a symmetrical “twin churches” effect despite differing sites.
Francesco Borromini began the undulating façade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (Rome); its concave–convex choreography became a landmark of Roman Baroque surface articulation and spatial illusionism in a constrained street setting.
By the time of Borromini’s death (1667), the lower stage of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane’s façade was substantially erected; later work completed the upper portions while preserving the intended wave-like profile.
Construction and finishing of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale (Rome) culminated in completion by 1670, with a compact, temple-front-like façade and a carefully staged approach that exemplified mature Roman Baroque church design.
After leadership changes among Rainaldi, Borromini, and later oversight including Bernini, Sant’Agnese in Agone (Rome) reached completion and was consecrated in 1672—an emblematic case of a long façade campaign shaped by patronage shifts.
Construction began on Santa Maria dei Miracoli (Rome), one of the Piazza del Popolo “twin churches,” advancing an urban façade program in which paired church fronts helped formalize a ceremonial gateway to the city.
The façade structure of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane was completed (with later sculptural decoration continuing afterward), bringing Borromini’s famously undulating street-front composition to a finished architectural state.
Work on Santa Maria in Montesanto (Rome) reached completion of its internal decoration by 1679 (with later additions), consolidating the intended visual pairing of the Corso’s entrance churches through coordinated façade-and-dome silhouettes.
Santa Maria dei Miracoli (Rome)—the circular-plan twin at Piazza del Popolo—was completed by 1681, finalizing the paired-facade urban composition that frames the piazza and the start of Via del Corso.
Carlo Fontana designed and built the late-Baroque façade for San Marcello al Corso (Rome), a major example of a later-17th-century façade campaign that used curvature and strong vertical ordering to refresh an older church body.
Alessandro Galilei completed the long-delayed façade of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (Rome) in 1734, a late culmination of an extended building history that added a new public face to a church body largely finished earlier.
Baroque church façades in Italy: designs and campaigns (1600–1750)
