Temple to god Minerva: 50 BC by Pompey the Great

Original church built over ruins: 741-752 by Pope Zacharias

Current Gothic church: 1280-1370 probably by Dominican Friars Sisto and Ristoro based on S. Maria Novella in Florence

Renaissance renovation: 16th by Giuliano da Sangallo

Baroque additions: 1600 by Carol Maderno

Neo-Gothic restoration: 1848-1855 by Fra Girolamo Bianchedi

Stained glass windows: 19th

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• Pope Alexander IV gave the Dominicans the monastery next to the church (1256) and the church itself (1275). This campus became known as the insula sapientae (Island of Wisdom) or insula dominicana (Dominican Island)

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•  Site of two Papal conclaves. Cardinals elected Pope Eugenius IV on March 3, 1431 and Pope Nicholas V on March 6, 1447

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• The offices of the Inquisition were established in the convent in 1628. After Galileo was tried for heresy, it was here he abjured his scientific theses of the Copernican theory on June 22, 1633

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• The studium was reorganized by Juan Salano, O.P. in 1577 into the College of St. Thomas. French occupation and Italian expropriation moved the school to Sts. Dominic and Sixtus in 1932 as the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas