San Giuseppe a Capo le Case, Roman Catholic church in Rione Colonna, Rome, Italy.
San Giuseppe a Capo le Case is a church in Rione Colonna, Rome, reached by a double staircase at the top of the Salita di Capo le Case. Its rectangular plan has no nave and no side chapels, only four altars, two per side. The facade is a curtain of brick with travertine only at the door frame, pediment, string course and Ionic capitals of the pilasters; inside, a barrel vault covers the room and the altar stands in a raised apse recess with four grilled windows that once linked it to the convent.
The church began in 1597 as the chapel of Rome's first Carmelite convent, founded by the Oratorian Francisco Soto, who in 1598 established the Teresian nuns with Fulvia Conti Sforza. Cardinal Marcello Lante, protector of the convent from 1607, rebuilt church and convent buildings in 1628. The convent was suppressed in 1873; the church was deconsecrated and later returned to use in the 1930s.
The name Capo le Case comes from the Latin caput domorum, "where the houses begin", a medieval label for this edge of the built-up city. The church served the Teresians founded by Francisco Soto with Fulvia Conti Sforza, who took in poor girls threatened by prostitution. In 1648 the lay brother Carlo da Sezze attended Mass here and, by a miracle, experienced stigmatization.
The church stands at the top of the Salita di Capo le Case, reached by a double staircase from Via Francesco Crispi. The entrance is on the upper level, so the visit begins after the climb. The interior is a single rectangular hall with four side chapels, two on each side, and the Holy Stairs chapel lies to the left of the apse.
Inside the church there is a replica of the Holy Stairs of the Lateran, built in 1717 and decorated with stucco work. This copy was made so that the cloistered nuns could climb a symbolic pilgrimage staircase without ever leaving the building.
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