Chiesa di Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza

Urban VIII appointed Borromini architect of the Sapienza in 1632, to finish a complex already designed and partly built by Giacomo Della Porta; the church's own site dates the building to 1642 to 1660. Borromini added the attic over the existing facade, carrying the eight-pointed stars and six hills of the Chigi for Alexander VII, and above it the lobed dome and the spiral cusped lantern with travertine torches, topped by a flaming crown with a wrought-iron sphere, cross and dove. The plan is centralised on a six-pointed star. Pietro da Cortona painted the high-altar canvas of Sant'Ivo, finished in 1683 by his pupil Giovanni Ventura Borghesi, and Borromini designed the marble intarsia floor.