. The church stands on the
Arx, the northern of the two peaks of the Capitoline hill, at an elevation of c. 48 m above sea level. In antiquity, this was the site of the
Temple of Juno Moneta, but no remains of the temple have been certainly identified, and its precise location is a subject of debate. The ancient walls discovered in the cellars beneath the church appear to belong chiefly to shops and houses, The foundation of the church was laid on the site of a
Byzantine abbey mentioned in 574. Many buildings were built around the first church; in the upper part they gave rise to a cloister, while on the slopes of the hill a little quarter and a market grew up. Remains of these buildings - such as the little church of San Biagio de Mercato and the underlying "
Insula Romana") - were discovered in the 1930s. At first the church followed the Greek rite, a sign of the power of the Byzantine exarch. Taken over by the papacy by the 9th century, the church was given first to the
Benedictines, then, by papal bull to the
Franciscans in 1249–1250; under the Franciscans it received its
Romanesque-
Gothic aspect. The arches that divide the
nave from the aisles are supported on columns, no two precisely alike, scavenged from Roman ruins. Originally the church was named
Sancta Maria in Capitolio, since it was sited on the
Capitoline Hill (Campidoglio, in
Italian) of Ancient Rome; by the 14th century it had been renamed. A medieval legend included in the mid-12th-century guide to
Rome,
Mirabilia Urbis Romae, claimed that the church was built over an
Augustan Ara primogeniti Dei, in the place where the
Tiburtine Sibyl prophesied to Augustus the coming of the
Christ. "For this reason the figures of Augustus and of the Tiburtine sibyl are painted on either side of the arch above the high altar". Its name originates from a legend according to which a sibyl predicted the coming of the son of God to Augustus by saying: "Haec est ara Filii Dei" (This is the altar of the son of God): hence the name Ara Coeli. During the Middle Ages, this church became the centre of the religious and civil life of the city. It was here in 1341 that
Petrarch was proclaimed
Poet laureate. During the republican experience of the 14th century, when self-proclaimed Tribune and reviver of the Roman Republic
Cola di Rienzo inaugurated the monumental stairway of 124 steps in front of the church, designed in 1348 by Simone Andreozzi, on the occasion of the
Black Death. Condemned criminals were executed at the foot of the steps; there Cola di Rienzo met his death, near the spot where his statue commemorates him. In 1571, Santa Maria in Aracoeli hosted the celebrations honoring
Marcantonio Colonna after the victorious
Battle of Lepanto over the Turkish fleet. Marking this occasion, the compartmented ceiling was gilded and painted (finished 1575), to thank the Blessed Virgin for the victory. In 1797, during the French occupation and the
Roman Republic, the basilica was deconsecrated and turned into a stable. It was almost demolished in the 1880s during the construction of the nearby
Vittoriano. ==Exterior==