Chiesa di Santa Maria della Strada

This is a Renaissance church of basilica plan: three aisles, no transept, and semicircular apses. The central nave is taller and wider than the two side aisles, which are symmetrical about the longitudinal axis. The west-facing façade carries a sculptural cycle in a distinctly barbaric style, an unexpected, almost jarring note for a Renaissance building. Above it, a rose window. The north façade is bare, its only ornament a row of blind arches across the upper storey. The south prospect repeats the blind arches, but adds a small doorway with a lunette, framed by three arches. The church thus presents three quite different faces to the world: a decorated front, a blank side, and one that offers a modest but composed entrance. It is not a showy building, but an intriguing one, where the usual Renaissance vocabulary of proportion and order is unsettled by a rougher, older decorative impulse.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.