Cappella del Pontificio Collegio Pio Brasiliano is the house chapel of the Brazilian seminary college, and located at Via Aurelia 527 in the Aurelio quarter. A picture of the church on Wikimedia Commons is here.
History[]
The college was founded as a seminary for Brazil in 1934, and is administered by the Jesuits.
The chapel was added in 1967. Unlike the rest of the establishment, it is an important work of the modernist church architect Silvio Galizia, and is well worth a visit.
Appearance[]
The college occupies a large, symmetrical, impressive but uninteresting neo-Baroque complex, and from the street one cannot see the chapel. It is behind the main range, and access is through the entrance and straight on.
The plan is complicated and innovative. Firstly, there is an atrium from the college entrance hall and attached to the main college building, having its own small pitched and hipped roof and shaped like an irregular hexagon. From the two side angles of this the front exterior walls curve back not as circular arcs but as logarithmic spirals, then run diagonally straight to behind the altar around which they form a smooth curve. The result is a kite shape with the corners rounded.
The exterior walls are in blank, rough white concrete with small trapezoidal windows at ground level. The walls have a curved batter, and over the altar rise in that curve to form a flat-roofed tower. The main roof is also complicated. The front area enclosed by the curves is flat, but the major part of the roof between the two straight sections of wall is in three sections shaped like flower petals (or coffins with the corners rounded). These start at the entrance end slightly raised above the flat section of roof, initially curve downwards and then rise on a slope to meet the vertical, outwardly bowed inner face of the tower.
A glance at the info.roma website photos, as well as the Wikimedia photo, may help make sense of this.