Chiesa di San Francesco d'Assisi a Ripa

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  • Address
    Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi 88, Trastevere
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  • Phone
    06 581 90 20
  • Transport
    tram: Viale di Trastevere
bus: Viale di Trastevere

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Lonely Planet review

The overriding reason to visit this otherwise unexceptional church is to gasp at one of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's most daring works. In the Beata Ludovica Albertoni (Blessed Ludovica Albertoni; 1674) is a work of highly charged sexual ambiguity showing Ludovica, a Franciscan nun, in a state of rapture as she reclines, eyes shut, mouth open, one hand touching her breast.

The innuendo is, if anything, more obvious than in Santa Teresa traffita dall'amore di Dio (Ecstasy of St Teresa) in the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Vittoria. St Francis of Assisi is said to have stayed in the church for a period in the 13th century and you can still see the rock that he used as a pillow.