Professed House, Rome

On the second floor of the Jesuit house beside the Gesù church in Rome, a marble rose is set into the floor of a long corridor. Stand on it, and the walls and vault painted by Andrea Pozzo, the Jesuit painter of illusions, line up into a convincing architecture of beams and arches. Step away, and the whole thing bends out of shape. Pozzo began it in 1680 and filled it with episodes from the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the order.

The corridor leads to the reason the house exists. Ignatius spent his last 12 years in four small rooms on this site and died in them in 1556. When the professed house, the headquarters of the Society of Jesus, was rebuilt from 1600 to designs by Girolamo Rainaldi, with money from Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, those rooms were kept and turned into chapels for the pilgrims who came looking for them. Visitors can still walk in from the street, and entry is free.

Next door stands the Gesù itself, the order's mother church. Its nave vault holds the Triumph of the Name of Jesus by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio, finished in 1679. His painted figures spill over the gilded frame onto the stucco, as if falling out of the ceiling towards the people below.