Chiesa di Sant'Andrea della Colonna, Demolished church site in Colonna district, Rome, Italy
Sant'Andrea della Colonna was a Catholic church in Rome's Colonna district, beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius on what is now Piazza Colonna, from which it took its name. It was demolished in the 16th century under Pope Paul III, so no structure survives. In the 15th century it held three altars: the high altar dedicated to the apostle Andrew and two side altars to the apostle John and the Immaculate Conception.
First mentioned under Pope Agapito II (946–955), the church was assigned to the monks of San Silvestro in Capite, who maintained the adjacent Column of Marcus Aurelius and charged visitors to climb its internal stair. A 1555 catalogue of Roman churches records its demolition under Pope Paul III (1534–1549), not Sixtus V in 1586 as Armellini claimed.
The name comes from the nearby Column of Marcus Aurelius, called "la gran colonna" in a 14th-century account of the Tiber flood of 1345, which reached the church. The monks of San Silvestro in Capite charged a fee to those who climbed the column's internal stair to view the city, and a plaque there records the abbot's threat of excommunication over its management.
The church no longer exists: it stood beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius, in today's Piazza Colonna, and was demolished under Pope Paul III (1534–1549). Visitors reach the square on foot from the Corso or by bus and metro stops nearby. Look for the column itself, which the monks of San Silvestro in Capite once maintained and showed to paying visitors.
The church was demolished under Pope Paul III (1534–1549), as a 1555 catalogue of Roman churches records; it no longer appears in later catalogues. The attribution to Sixtus V and the 1586 remodelling of Piazza Colonna, proposed by Mariano Armellini, is rejected by Hülsen. The Cancellieri del Bufalo family, who had tombs in the church, obtained a side chapel in Santa Maria in Via as a private chapel after the demolition.
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