Santa Maria del Popolo
Soon after its transfer to the prestigious Lombard Congregation Santa Maria del Popolo was reconstructed between 1472 and 1477 on the orders of Pope Sixtus IV. This was part of the ambitious urban renovation program of the pope who presented himself as "Urbis Restaurator" of Rome. The medieval church was entirely demolished and a new three-aisled, Latin cross shaped basilica was built with four identical chapels on both sides, an octagonal dome above the crossing and a tall Lombard style bell-tower at the end of the right transept. The result of this reconstruction was an early and excellent example of Italian Renaissance architecture in Rome. In spite of the many later changes the basilica essentially kept its Sistine form until today.
Palazzo Wedekind
On a site occupied in antiquity by the Temple of Marcus Aurelius, the medieval buildings on the site were cleared for a structure erected by the Ludovisi (1659) that became the offices of the vicegerente of the vicariate of Rome. To house the general director of the postal service for the Papal States, moved here in 1814, the palazzo was completely rebuilt by Pope Gregory XVI to designs by Giuseppe Valadier carried out by Pietro Camporese the Younger. At Valadier's urging, Camporese added a portico built with twelve elegant Roman columns brought from the ruins of Veii, supplemented with two pairs of columns flanking the main doorway, retrieved from the basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura, which burned in 1823.