Church of San Giovanni della Pigna, Baroque church in Rione Pigna, Rome, Italy

San Giovanni della Pigna is a small baroque church on Traversa Vicolo della Minerva in the rione Pigna. Its facade has four Ionic pilasters, a relief of an angel over the door and a circular pediment. Inside, a single nave under a lunetted barrel vault has four side altars in polychrome marble niches.

A church dedicated to Saints Eleutherius and Genesius stood here by 955, when Pope Agapetus II named it in a papal bull. In ruins, it was granted in 1584 by Gregory XIII to the Archconfraternity of Piety towards Prisoners, which rebuilt it from the foundations; the work by architect Angelo Torroni was finished in 1624. Restored again in 1837 under Virginio Vespignani, it was entrusted in 1870 to Don Bosco's Salesians and became a cardinal deaconry in 1985.

The church takes its name from the bronze pine cone found in the area, now kept in the Vatican's Cortile della Pigna. From 2007 it has been the church of Italians abroad, and since 1985 it has been a cardinal deaconry, held first by Francis Arinze and from 2007 by Raffaele Farina.

The church stands on Traversa Vicolo della Minerva in the rione Pigna, a short walk from Piazza della Minerva and the Pantheon. The entrance is on the side street rather than the piazza, so look for the plain baroque facade set between neighbouring buildings. The surrounding lanes are pedestrian-friendly and connect directly to Largo di Torre Argentina and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.

The organ on the counter-façade was built by the Priori family in the early 18th century and restored in 2007 by Barthélemy Formentelli. Its transmission is entirely mechanical, with a single 50-note keyboard and a 17-note pedalboard, both with a broken first octave. The pedalboard stays permanently coupled to the manual.