Monuments in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo
This elaborate Baroque monument set against the third pillar of the south aisle has several peculiarities. It is crowned by the coat-of-arms of Pope Nicholas IV (Girolamo Masci) but this medieval pope was buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The monument in Santa Maria del Popolo was built for his late descendant, Count Masci-Ferracuti from Ascoli Piceno who was appointed to the Bishop of Vieste by Pope Sixtus V in 1589. He died in Rome in 1613 at the age of 60 years. He was buried with solemn pomp in a marble tomb in the basilica. The tomb was built by her niece, Anastasia Mascia and her husband, Marzio Elefantucci, a nobleman from Bologna. Under the pretense of honouring their uncle they built a monument for the most illustrious member of their family, Pope Nicholas IV whose name is mentioned twice in the funerary inscription.
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.