Sant’Isidoro a Capo le Case

Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case is at Via degli Artisti 41, in the Ludovisi district, and it is the church of the College of Sant'Isidoro, the Roman home of the Irish Franciscans. It has no published visiting hours: you can be sure of getting in at the Sunday Mass at 10, celebrated in English and suspended in August, or by asking the college at 06 4885359 or writing to col.isidoro@gmail.com. Entry is free, there is no ticket.

It is the national church of the Irish in Rome, founded in 1625 by a friar from Waterford, Luke Wadding, who made it a seminary for confreres fleeing the anti-Catholic laws. Inside there is a chapel designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, an altarpiece by Andrea Sacchi, two cycles by Carlo Maratta, and around it a convent with two cloisters, a historic library and an archive that scholars of Irish history know better than Romans do.

The address, contact details, hours and language of the Sunday Mass come from the college's official website as of September 29, 2026. The college does not publish weekday church hours or a calendar of visits, and many openings go through cultural associations and events such as Open House Roma. Before climbing the staircase with a group or with a fixed appointment, write or call and have the day and time confirmed, especially in the summer months.

Where it is and what you see from outside

Via degli Artisti is a short, sloping street that begins near the intersection at the top of Via di Capo le Case, where San Giuseppe stands, and continues toward the area of Via Ludovisi and Via Veneto. The church does not face a square. It stands above the street, raised on an embankment, and you reach it by a double flight of stairs leading to a portico. Anyone passing by distracted mistakes it for the entrance to a building.

The facade with the portico and the two flights is the work of Carlo Francesco Bizzaccheri, who built it in 1704 and 1705, 80 years after the founding. It is a front in travertine and plaster, sober, designed to solve a difference in level more than to amaze. From the street you mainly see the play of the stairs, and that is the point: the church is built on the flank of the Pincian hill, where the houses once ended and vineyards and gardens began.

Next to and behind the church spreads the college complex, with the cloisters and the study rooms that can't be seen from the street. The convent is a living religious community, not an empty monument: Franciscan friars live there, research is done, studies are published, a library is kept. The college's main door is not a tourist entrance, and ringing at random at lunchtime is not the best way to introduce yourself.

The neighborhood around it is that of the elegant late-19th-century streets, built on the lands of the Ludovisi villa, with Via Veneto a few hundred meters away and the descent toward Piazza di Spagna on the other side. Sant'Isidoro is older than everything around it. When it was built, this was urban countryside, and its raised position today tells of a landscape that has disappeared under the Umbertine buildings.

How to get in: Mass, appointments and special openings

The simplest way is the Sunday Mass at 10, in English, which the college lists on its website as suspended in the month of August. It is a service, not a visit: you go in, take part or sit at the back in silence, and at the end, if a friar is available, you can politely ask to see the chapels. There are no published weekday hours, and the college does not give fixed openings during the week.

The second way is a direct request. The official contacts are the phone 06 4885359 and the address col.isidoro@gmail.com. Write in Italian or English, say how many of you there are, why you are coming and on which days you can, and leave some margin: a religious community devoted to study has no visits office, and the answer depends on who is in the house. For organized groups you need weeks, not days.

The third way is the special openings. The College of Sant'Isidoro appears among the sites of Open House Roma, the event that opens architecture usually closed for a weekend, and several Roman cultural associations have organized booked visits to the complex and the De Sylva chapel over the years. These are limited-number appointments, with dates that change every year: look for them on the website of the event or of the association.

On cost, things are simple. The church is free to enter and the college does not sell tickets. The guided visits by the associations have a price set by the association, and that should be read on their page, not on resale sites. The college lists no online tours dedicated to this church, and a generic product on the churches of Rome will not take you inside Sant'Isidoro. Be wary of anyone who promises guaranteed entry without mentioning the college.

The college also has a page devoted to weddings, because the Irish national church is requested by couples who come to marry in Rome. This has a practical consequence for visitors: on Saturday the church may be occupied by a private ceremony, and in those hours it is not the moment to go in and look at the chapels. If you happen to find a wedding, come back later, the church isn't going anywhere.

A curiosity about Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case

The saint of the church is neither Irish nor Franciscan. Isidore the Farmer was a peasant from Madrid who lived in the Middle Ages, patron of the Spanish capital, canonized by Gregory XV in 1622 together with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri. In the same year some Spanish Discalced Franciscans arrived in Rome with the idea of founding a convent dedicated to the new saint, and chose this piece of hillside.

The Spanish project lasted a very short time. Money was lacking, and within two or three years the newly started convent passed to the Irish. The sources waver between 1624 and 1625 for the handover, while the college fixes its own foundation at 1625, with Wadding taking over the property. The result is an Irish church dedicated to a Spanish saint, with a name that nobody has ever thought of changing in four centuries.

The second curiosity concerns a day on the calendar. According to the history published by the college, it was Luke Wadding, around 1630, who obtained that the feast of Saint Patrick enter the universal liturgical calendar of the Church. The March 17 that half the world now celebrates with beer and shamrocks thus has an administrative root in a convent on Via degli Artisti, in the dealings of a friar who knew his way around the offices of the Roman curia.

Keep the two levels separate. The document says that the feast entered the universal calendar in those years and that Wadding worked to obtain it. The popular Irish story makes him a national hero who supposedly invented Saint Patrick's Day. The day already existed in Ireland for centuries. What Wadding did was bring it to Rome and make it count for the whole Church, which is no small thing but is something else.

The interior, chapel by chapel

The church has a single nave in the shape of a Latin cross, covered by a barrel vault, with two chapels on each side and two chapels at the sides of the presbytery. The design is attributed to Antonio Felice Casoni, with the construction site continued by Domenico Castelli. It is a medium-sized conventual church, built quickly and with few means in the early years, then enriched by the families who bought a chapel there for their own burial.

On the high altar is the altarpiece by Andrea Sacchi with Saint Isidore and the Virgin with the Child. Sacchi is the painter who painted the Divine Wisdom at Palazzo Barberini, and this altarpiece is from the same season, that of the Roman classicism that opposed the exuberance of Pietro da Cortona. Anyone who has seen Sacchi's ceiling at the palace recognizes the same measure, the same calm light, the same refusal of effect.

Carlo Maratta appears twice. In the first chapel on the right he painted the stories of the life of Saint Joseph, and in the De Sylva chapel the Immaculate Conception, which the college dates to 1663, with the frame carved to a design by Bernini and the marble cherubs. Maratta was young then, a pupil of Sacchi himself, and here you see him working a few meters from his master, something that in Rome rarely happens to be observed so closely.

The decoration of the dome is 19th-century, the work of Domenico Bartolini, and you can see at once that it belongs to another era. At the entrance the college points out the paintings of Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget, the two patrons of Ireland, placed there to declare to whoever comes in whose house this is. They are the church's least celebrated images and the ones that say the most about its identity.

A note on attributions. For the minor chapels and for several secondary paintings, guides and popular sites give different names, and not always with sources. Here you find only the artists named by the college itself and by the main historical sources. If in the church a label or a guide offers you a name that is missing here, take it as an attribution to verify, not as certain fact.

One thing nobody tells you about Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case

The De Sylva chapel is sold as the Bernini chapel, and here the position is firm: it is a label that promises too much. Bernini gave the design for the chapel and the frame, but the funerary monuments that fill it, according to the historical sources, are by his son Paolo Valentino, and the execution went through the workshop. It is a Berninian project, not a Bernini to look at the way you look at the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.

The comparison everyone makes is with the Cornaro chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, where Bernini staged the patron's family leaning out of boxes as if at the theater. Here the idea is similar, the portraits of the De Sylva are there, but the master's hand is not felt in the same way. Anyone who comes after seeing the Cornaro risks disappointment, anyone who comes before doesn't understand the reference.

What really makes the climb worthwhile is something else: the coherence of the whole, that is a church from the early 17th century that stayed in the hands of the same community for 400 years, with its library, its cloisters, its burials. In Rome the national churches number in the dozens, but very few still preserve, under the same roof, the daily life of the institution that founded them. This is one of those, and that is the reason to come.

Another thing that is rarely said: today's community is not only Irish. The college itself writes of an international community of friars minor from Korea, Italy, Ireland, Slovenia, Germany, Poland and the United States. The title of Irish national church remains, the Sunday Mass is in English, but whoever opens the door for you may have any accent. It is the form a national church takes today if it wants to stay open.

My advice for visiting Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case

Go on Sunday morning and arrive around 9:40, before the 10 o'clock Mass. You have time to climb the staircase without hurry, to look at the facade from below and to go in as the church is filling up. Sit in the last rows, follow the service or stay silent, and wait until the end. It is the moment when the church is open, lit, and when there is someone to ask.

After the Mass, ask. Not with the expectation of a guided tour, but with a precise question: can the De Sylva chapel be seen up close? A friar who has just celebrated often has little time, and a short, polite request works better than 10 questions. If they say no, say thank you and write during the week to the college's address, mentioning the day you came by.

If your interest is the library, the archive or the cloisters, Sunday is not enough. Those spaces are places of work, and access goes through a written request with a reason, perhaps stating your subject of study. The college presents the library as a tool for research on Franciscan history, and anyone who arrives with a serious research question is taken seriously. Anyone who comes only out of curiosity has to accept a no.

Avoid August. The Sunday Mass in English is suspended in that month, and with part of the community away from Rome the chances of finding someone available drop a lot. The best months are October and November, and then March, when the Irish presence in the city is concentrated around the 17th and the college has its liveliest period. Always check beforehand, because the Saint Patrick events are not published in advance.

Bring clothing suitable for a church in use, shoulders and legs covered, and keep your phone in your pocket during the service. It seems obvious, but in a small church where the community knows each other, a tourist photographing the altar during the consecration is noticed at once and closes the door even to those who come after. Here hospitality is earned with behavior, not with a reservation.

The De Sylva chapel and Bernini's bel composto

The De Sylva chapel opens to the side of the presbytery and is the reason most art historians climb up here. The design is by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the renovation dates to the 1660s, and Maratta's Immaculate Conception on the altar is dated by the college to 1663. The family's tombs, with the portraits in medallions, are attributed by the sources to Paolo Valentino Bernini, the master's son.

The concept scholars use for this chapel is that of the bel composto, that is the union in a single space of architecture, sculpture and painting conceived together. The formula has become a commonplace of criticism, and here you can see clearly where it comes from. The point is that no element should be looked at alone: the frame converses with the altarpiece, the portraits converse with the altar, the light does the rest.

To understand the language, it helps to have seen it elsewhere. The itinerary Bernini in Rome lines up the major works, and a few minutes from here you find the Triton Fountain and Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, the church that, according to tradition, Bernini considered his most successful. Having seen those, the De Sylva chapel reads as an exercise of family and workshop, with its limits and its intelligence.

If you manage to get in, stop on the threshold of the chapel before approaching. The bel composto works from a precise point, the one from which the worshipper entered, and loses a lot if you look at it from the side or too close. It is the same rule that holds for all Roman Baroque: first you look from the point intended by the architect, then you go to see the details, and never the other way around.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

Via degli Artisti, according to a very widespread explanation, owes its name to a group of painters who lived in this very convent. Between 1810 and 1814, during the Napoleonic occupation, the rooms of the college that had been left empty hosted the Nazarenes, a group of young painters, mostly German, led by Friedrich Overbeck, who wanted to refound religious art by looking to the masters before Raphael. They lived like a confraternity, among the friars' cells.

The fact is well known among art historians, but almost never cited by people walking down the street. The artists of the name are not those of Via Margutta, nor the street painters of Piazza di Spagna. They are these young Germans, who in a Rome occupied by the French slept in an Irish convent and painted with the 15th century in mind. That the name of the street recalls precisely them is the most widespread version, but no plaque explains it and the sources do not agree.

The link with German culture in Rome in those years is strong. Anyone who wants to follow the thread will find the Casa di Goethe on Via del Corso, which tells of the previous generation of German travelers, and the area of Trinità dei Monti and of the Casa dei Mostri of Palazzetto Zuccari, where artists and scholars from the north lived for two centuries.

The fact also has a bearing on the history of the college. The history published by the friars stresses that, apart from two brief periods during the Napoleonic occupation and only in part, Sant'Isidoro never left Irish hands. The Nazarenes are the visible trace of one of those periods. In those years the library was saved thanks to the guardian James MacCormack, according to what the college tells.

Luke Wadding, the friar who built it all

Luke Wadding was born in Waterford in 1588, entered the Franciscan order in Lisbon and was ordained a priest in 1613. He arrived in Rome in 1618 as theological adviser to a delegation of the Spanish crown, and never left. When the Spanish Franciscans were unable to sustain the convent of Sant'Isidoro, he was the one who offered to take it over to make it a house of formation for Irish friars.

According to the college's history, in five years he raised 22,000 scudi to complete the church and expand the convent, raising its capacity from 12 to 60 residents. He was rector for 30 years, died in 1657 and was buried in the college crypt. Behind these figures is a man who knew the curia, the Catholic courts of Europe and how to turn a network of relationships into walls and books.

His work as a scholar weighs as much as his work as a builder. He published the Annales Minorum, the great history of the Franciscan order in eight volumes, edited the large multivolume edition of the works of Duns Scotus that came out in 1639, and an annotated edition of the writings of Saint Francis. He put together a library of about 5,000 volumes with manuscripts. For Franciscan history his name is a reference still today.

He was also a political man. In 1628 he founded the Pontifical Irish College for the training of the diocesan clergy, in 1641 he became the Rome agent of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland, and in 1645 he worked toward sending a papal nuncio to the island. In 1656 he opened an Irish Franciscan novitiate at Capranica, in the Tuscia, which stayed active until 1983. A whole life spent building institutions for a country he could not return to.

For those coming from the Franciscan world, the useful comparison is with the Franciscan Museum of the Historical Institute of the Capuchins, which preserves another memory of the order, and with Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill, the city's great Franciscan church. Wadding moved among these worlds, and his college was one of the nodes of the network.

The right photo to take at Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case

The right photo is taken from outside, from the street, and it is about the staircase. Stand on Via degli Artisti a few meters below the church, on the opposite sidewalk, and frame vertically the two flights that climb to the portico, with the facade above. The subject is the difference in level: the church rising above the street, the hill that continues to exist beneath the asphalt.

The best light is in the morning, when the sun lights the facade without flattening it. In the afternoon the narrow street goes into shadow and the buildings opposite cut the light unevenly. On Sunday, between 9:30 and 10, you also have the advantage of open doors and a few people climbing the stairs, which gives the scale of the building better than any ruler.

Inside, photographs are taken only with permission and never during services. If they authorize you, the De Sylva chapel should be shot from the threshold, head-on, to respect the point of view the designer intended. Without a tripod and with the low light of conventual churches, raise the sensitivity and accept a bit of grain: better a noisy, still image than a sharp, blurred one.

Avoid photographing friars, worshippers and newlyweds. It is a religious community that lives here, not a set, and a wedding is a private ceremony even if it takes place in an open church. Those traveling in a group must keep this in mind for everyone: a single person photographing without asking can ruin the relationship of trust that makes other people's visits possible.

The college, the library and the cloisters

The convent has two cloisters. The smaller one is the original Spanish one, designed by Casoni in 1626 according to the historical sources, the only part that preserves the imprint of the first founders. The larger one is Wadding's cloister, named for the friar who had it built and which the college describes as decorated with paintings by Giovanni Antonio Sguary, a Franciscan friar and painter from Padua.

The Aula Magna was decorated in 1672 in honor of the Immaculate Conception, a theme dear to the Franciscans and to the Scotism that Wadding had defended in his studies. Here, according to the college, is the portrait of Luke Wadding painted by Emanuele da Como, a friar painter of the community. It is a space for ceremony and study, not a museum, and access depends on the activities under way and on the availability of the friars.

The library is the heart of the college. The college describes it as an indispensable tool for research on the early history of the Franciscans, and recalls its historic core in the volumes gathered by Wadding. Next to it is an archive that keeps documents on the Irish presence in Rome and on the missions. The official website devotes separate pages to the library and the archive, and that is where a scholar should start.

The college today is devoted to research, scholarly publishing, the formation of the friars and the care of the library, according to what the community itself states. This vocation explains why visits are not organized as in a museum. The right comparison is with the city's other historic libraries, like the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, where you go in to study, not to do the rounds.

Some important events that happened here in history

On March 12, 1622 Gregory XV canonizes five saints, among them Isidore the Farmer. In the same year a group of Spanish Discalced Franciscans starts a convent in Rome dedicated to the new saint, in the then almost uninhabited area above today's Via di Capo le Case. The founding of the church is also tied to the nobleman Ottaviano Vestri di Barbiano, recalled by the sources together with a bull of Urban VIII from 1625.

Between 1624 and 1625 the complex passes to the Irish Franciscans led by Luke Wadding. In 1625 the college is born, and in 1626 the small cloister is built. In the following five years Wadding raises the funds to complete the church and expand the convent. In 1628 Wadding himself founds the Pontifical Irish College, and around 1630 he obtains the inclusion of the feast of Saint Patrick in the universal calendar.

In the 1660s Bernini redesigns the De Sylva chapel and Maratta paints the Immaculate Conception, dated by the college to 1663. In 1657 Wadding had died, buried in the crypt. In 1672 the Aula Magna is decorated. Between 1704 and 1705 Carlo Francesco Bizzaccheri builds the facade with the portico and the double flight, and the church takes on the look you still see from the street.

In 1788, according to the college's history, the rector Michael Egan brings the last sacraments to Charles Edward Stuart, the Jacobite pretender to the British throne, who died in Rome that year. It is an episode that ties Sant'Isidoro to the great Catholic cause of the Stuarts, of which Rome was the last refuge. The Stuart monuments are in St. Peter's Basilica, and the thread that leads there passes through here too.

Between 1810 and 1814 the convent, emptied during the Napoleonic occupation, hosts the Nazarene painters. The college recalls only two brief periods, and only in part, in which the house left Irish hands. In the 19th century Sant'Isidoro sends missionaries to Newfoundland, North America and Australia, and several of them become bishops. In the same century Domenico Bartolini decorates the church's dome.

The college passes through the two world wars without suppressions or destruction, according to what its official history reports. The novitiate of Capranica, opened by Wadding in 1656, closes in 1983. In 2025 the community celebrates the 400 years since its founding, with events in Rome and wide coverage in the Irish press. Today the college hosts an international community of friars minor and remains the national church of Ireland in Rome.

Who has passed through Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case

Luke Wadding, first of all, founder, rector for 30 years, buried in the crypt. Beside him rests Aodh Mac Aingil, in English Hugh McCaughwell, archbishop of Armagh, whom the college names as the most important Irish theologian of his era. In the crypt, again according to the college, are also buried James MacCormack, the guardian who saved the library in the Napoleonic years, and a cardinal of the Corsini family.

John Henry Newman, the English theologian who converted to Catholicism and was later proclaimed a saint, passed through here during his Roman stay between the end of 1846 and 1847. The college tells that in this church he gave his first sermon as a Catholic, at the funeral of an 18-year-old Irish girl, Octavia Catherine Bryan. The document is the burial, the tradition is the account of the sermon, and on the exact date the sources do not agree.

Charles Edward Stuart, the prince whom the Jacobites called king and the English the Young Pretender, received the last sacraments from the rector of Sant'Isidoro in 1788, according to the college's history. The romantic legend has him tied to the Irish cause to his last breath. The documented fact is more sober: an Irish friar went to his bedside, and that is enough to show how much the community was inside the Catholic life of English Rome.

Friedrich Overbeck and the Nazarenes, already described, lived here for a few years. The group left the convent with the return of the pope and the friars, but Overbeck stayed in Rome for the rest of his life and became a reference figure for European religious painting of the 19th century. Of that season the college keeps no Nazarene works pointed out to the public: what remains is the name of the street, and the fact that an artistic avant-garde was born among these cells.

Three members of the community have been raised to the altars, according to the college: Saint Humilis of Bisignano, who died in 1637, the blessed Bonaventure of Barcelona, who died in 1684, and the blessed Charles Meehan, an Irishman, martyred in North Wales in 1679. They are three different stories, a Calabrian, a Catalan and an Irishman, and they show well that the convent, from the beginning, was less closed than the national title suggests.

Then there are the painters: Andrea Sacchi, Carlo Maratta, the Berninis father and son, Emanuele da Como, Giovanni Antonio Sguary, and Domenico Bartolini for the dome. And the architects, from Casoni to Castelli to Bizzaccheri. Anyone who loves the Roman 17th century finds here a small anthology of names that appear on a large scale in the National Gallery of Ancient Art and in the surrounding churches.

How to get there

On foot, which is the right way. From Piazza di Spagna you go up Via Due Macelli and Via di Capo le Case to the intersection with Via Francesco Crispi, then take Via degli Artisti. From Piazza Barberini you go up the first stretch of Via Veneto and turn into the side streets that descend toward Via degli Artisti, with the phone map open. In both cases it is a few minutes, with a stretch uphill.

By public transport it's best to aim for the area around Piazza Barberini or Piazza di Spagna and do the last stretch on foot. Lines, stops and schedules change, and the most reliable way to plan is the route calculator of Rome's transport company, setting Via degli Artisti 41 as the destination. The college does not list recommended lines on its website, and there is no point inventing them here.

Don't come by car. The historic center has access rules that change with the hours and the gates, and the blue-line parking spaces around Via Veneto are few and contested, especially on Sunday morning. Anyone arriving with a tour bus must let the group off in the permitted areas and continue on foot, and in this case the staircase becomes the first obstacle to consider for elderly people or people with mobility difficulties.

On accessibility the college publishes no information. From the street the church is reached by the facade stairs, and no alternative step-free entrance is indicated. Anyone using a wheelchair or with difficulty moving should ask by phone or email if there is a passable route through the college, before setting out.

When it is closed and what not to expect

The church is closed for most of the week. There are no published weekday hours, and finding the doors open in passing is a matter of luck. In August the Sunday Mass in English is suspended, and with it the surest chance to get in. Showing up on any afternoon expecting to visit is the quickest way to end up in front of a closed door.

Don't expect tourist services. There is no ticket office, no panels, no audio guides, no bookshop and no restrooms for visitors. There is no guide on duty to accompany you. Everything you see, you see because someone from the community let you in or because you take part in a service, and the story you have to bring with you, by preparing beforehand.

Don't expect to see everything. Even with an appointment, the cloisters, the Aula Magna, the library and the crypt may remain excluded, and the crypt with the burials of Wadding and the others is not a place for ordinary visits. The special openings by the associations and by Open House Roma are the best chance to see the rooms of the convent, and they should be booked as soon as they come out.

Don't expect, finally, a church of great scenic impact. Anyone used to the Gesù or to Sant'Ignazio finds a conventual hall of modest size. The value of Sant'Isidoro lies in its history and in a few works of high quality, not in size or splendor, and it should be visited with that key.

The national churches of Rome, for comparison

Rome is full of national churches, and lining them up helps to understand Sant'Isidoro. The most famous is San Luigi dei Francesi, with the Caravaggios. Then there is Santa Maria dell'Anima for the German world, Santa Maria in Monserrato for the Spanish, Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi, San Girolamo dei Croati.

Alongside are the churches of Italian regional communities and of the Eastern rite: San Giovanni Battista dei Genovesi, San Bartolomeo dei Bergamaschi, San Biagio degli Armeni, the Russian church of Santa Caterina. Inside the Vatican walls is the Camposanto Teutonico, another place of a foreign community that has kept its burials for centuries.

Compared with these, Sant'Isidoro has a substantial difference: it was not born as a church of merchants or pilgrims, but as a house of study for religious in exile. The Irish had no commercial nation in Rome to represent. They needed to train priests and friars to send back to a country where their faith was persecuted. This explains the library, the archive and the reserve of the place.

A frequent mistake is confusing Sant'Isidoro with the Pontifical Irish College. They are two different institutions, even if both bear Wadding's signature: the Franciscan college on Via degli Artisti was born in 1625 for the friars, the Irish College was born in 1628 for the diocesan clergy and today has its own seat in another area of the city. Anyone making an appointment must know which of the two to write to, because the contact details do not coincide.

Eating in the area

The area between Via Veneto, Via Sistina and Piazza di Spagna is one of the most expensive and at the same time one of the most treacherous in Rome for anyone looking for food. The flows of the Spanish Steps and of the Trevi Fountain pass through here, and many places live on customers who will not come back. Recognizing the signs saves you money and disappointment, without needing any names.

First sign, the menu with photos of the dishes, translated into many languages and perhaps displayed on a stand at the entrance. Second, the person at the door who stops you and invites you in. A place that has to find customers on the sidewalk has no regulars, and regulars are the only real guarantee. Romans don't go in for that reason, not out of snobbery.

Third sign, the woman rolling fresh pasta in the window or at a table in the street. It is a show meant for passersby, not a proof of quality: serious pasta is made in the kitchen in the morning. Fourth, places open without a break from morning to late at night, because a real kitchen has a pause, and a crew that works 16 hours straight does not cook well.

Fifth sign, typical of prime streets like this one: items without a price, fish by weight with no indication, different price lists inside and outside. In front of monuments and on famous streets it happens that the price adapts to the customer. Always ask the price before ordering, and if the answer is vague, get up politely and go elsewhere.

The criterion is to look at who is sitting at the tables. If at lunch, on a weekday, there are employees from the offices in the area and people speaking Roman, you're in the right place. If there are only visitors with a map and the waiter speaks to you in English before you open your mouth, take the information for what it is, without judgment, and adjust accordingly.

To avoid trial and error there is our list of the places where we eat, updated when the places change and with no sponsorships. In the Sant'Isidoro area it pays to go down a few streets toward the Tritone or back up past Via Veneto, away from the most exposed shopfronts, where prices go back to normal and the cooking goes back to being cooking.

What to pair it with in a day

The most natural combination is with the nearby churches. San Giuseppe a Capo le Case closes the top of the same climb, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte keeps the Bernini angels meant for Ponte Sant'Angelo, and San Nicola da Tolentino is just beyond Piazza Barberini. Three churches in an hour, all tied to the Roman 17th century and to the same hill.

Going up toward Via Veneto you find Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini with the Capuchin Friars Museum and the crypt, another Franciscan community with a very different history. Comparing the two convents, a few minutes from each other, tells well the variety of the Franciscan world in 17th-century Rome.

For art, the richest route leads to Palazzo Barberini, where you find Sacchi and Maratta's contemporaries, and then to the Cornaro chapel and the Quattro Fontane with Borromini's San Carlo. Those who prefer the 19th century go down instead toward the Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Roma, on Via Francesco Crispi.

Those who want to finish outdoors climb toward the Pincio and Villa Borghese, passing by Villa Medici and the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pinciana. From there the Galleria Borghese completes the discussion of Bernini, with the great youthful sculptures that explain what the De Sylva chapel only hints at.

For the Irish and Anglo-Saxon thread, the Keats-Shelley House on the Spanish Steps tells of the English travelers of the 19th century, and the Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi tells of the family and the villa on whose lands the neighborhood around Sant'Isidoro grew. Two short visits, suited to completing a morning that began with the 10 o'clock Mass.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case open to visitors?

It has no published visiting hours. The college lists the Sunday Mass at 10 in English, suspended in August, which is the surest moment to find the church open. Outside that time you enter on request to the college, by phone at 06 4885359 or at the address col.isidoro@gmail.com, or during special openings such as Open House Roma.

Do you pay to get in?

No, entry to the church is free and the college does not sell tickets. The guided visits organized by cultural associations on the occasion of special openings may have a cost, set by the association and shown on its page. There is no official sales channel to visit the church, and no online reseller is in a position to guarantee entry.

In what language is the Mass celebrated?

The Sunday Mass at 10, according to the college's website, is celebrated in English. Sant'Isidoro is the Irish national church in Rome and the community of friars minor that runs it is international. The rite is the Roman rite of the Catholic Church. In August the Sunday service is suspended, so it's best to check before organizing a summer visit.

Who runs the church today?

The church belongs to the College of Sant'Isidoro, founded in 1625 by the Irish Franciscan Luke Wadding and kept in the hands of the Irish Franciscans until today, apart from brief Napoleonic periods. The college declares an international community of friars minor from different countries, devoted to research, to the formation of the friars and to the care of the library.

Is the De Sylva chapel really by Bernini?

The design of the chapel and of the altarpiece frame is attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, while the family's funerary monuments are attributed by the historical sources to his son Paolo Valentino. The altarpiece with the Immaculate Conception is by Carlo Maratta, dated by the college to 1663. It is a Berninian project carried out largely by the workshop.

Why is the street called Via degli Artisti?

According to the most widespread explanation the name recalls the Nazarenes, the group of painters, mostly German, led by Friedrich Overbeck, who between 1810 and 1814, during the Napoleonic occupation, lived in the rooms of the convent. The link between that presence and the name of the street is the current version, but the sources do not entirely agree. The street today leads from Via di Capo le Case toward Via Veneto area.

Can you visit the cloisters and the library?

The cloisters, Aula Magna, library and archive are living and study spaces of the community, not museum spaces. Access goes through a written request to the college, preferably backed by study reasons, or through the special openings organized by events and cultural associations. Even with an appointment some rooms may be left out of the visit.

Can you get married at Sant'Isidoro?

The college's website has a page devoted to weddings, a sign that the church hosts wedding ceremonies, in particular for couples who choose the Irish national church to marry in Rome. Conditions, required documents and availability should be asked of the college directly. For visitors, it means that on Saturday the church may be occupied by a private ceremony.

Who wrote the page

The page comes from the editorial team of Tour Leader Pro, the Rome-based outfit that designs itineraries, visits and cultural events across Rome and Lazio. The contact details, Mass hours and information on the community come from the official website of the College of Sant'Isidoro as of the date given at the top. Since this is a religious community with no visitor service, check everything again before you leave, and tell us what you find changed.

Organizing a morning among the churches of the 17th century means fitting together Sunday Masses, appointments with religious communities who answer when they can, special openings with limited numbers and climbs that you can't see on the map, for yourself or for a group of 40 people. If you're facing this kind of puzzle, on Tour Leader Pro you'll find working materials designed for people who guide groups and for people who organize on their own.

For the big picture, meaning regional trains and seasonal timetables, rentals, airports, moving between one province and another and destinations in Lazio outside the center of Rome, from the Castelli to the volcanic lakes of the north, down to the Tyrrhenian coast and the villages of the interior, a useful resource for putting together a multi-day itinerary is Italy Planner.