Rome’s ‘propogation of the faith’ museum is housed in a 17th-century baroque masterpiece designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, and is an opportunity to peer into Bernini’s wooden, Hogwartseque library, with its ceiling carved with Barberini bees, and Borromini’s Chapel of the Magi, where the Wise Men’s Epiphany acts an allegory for converts to Christianity.
This little-visited museum houses items brought back from overseas missions, with the eclectic collection including paintings of Japanese life in the 1930s and a Canova portrait of Ezzelino Romano. It was closed for renovation at the time of research, but should have reopened by publication.
