Della Rovere Chapel, Renaissance chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, Italy

Della Rovere Chapel is a chapel within the basilica Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, featuring hexagonal architecture and an ornate ribbed vault overhead. The interior displays frescoes depicting religious scenes and conversations among saints across its walls.

The chapel came about following the church's reconstruction under Pope Sixtus IV, when Cardinal Domenico della Rovere took control of it in 1477. The cardinal then commissioned the artist Pinturicchio to decorate the interior.

The chapel is also called Cappella del Presepio, after the Nativity scene in Pinturicchio's altarpiece above the altar. The dedicatory plaque sits in the lower frame between two Della Rovere coats of arms carved with the cardinal's hat. The polychrome grotesques on a yellow-gold ground, cleaned in the 1990s, include masks, swans, camels, shells and musical instruments.

The space is located inside the large basilica Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome's northern area, easy to find when visiting the main church. Visitors should know that the chapel is an interior space accessible during the basilica's regular opening hours.

The fifth lunette, showing the Death of Saint Jerome, was hidden for centuries behind Giovanni de Castro's tomb, moved here in the 17th century, and was only recently rediscovered; some scholars think it holds the portrait of Cardinal Della Rovere that Vasari mentions. The lunettes were detached and transferred to canvas in the 18th century.