The Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, among its countless beauties, houses a particular chapel which you can be interesting in order to take a look to the Renaissance in Rome: the Chigi Chapel (the second chapel on the left). As a local tour guide I can swear you that this space is gorgeous, a place that must be appreciate and taste, in some degree. 

It was designed by Raphael, upon entering the chapel you will find two pyramidal funeral monuments on either side. The one on the right, also designed by Raphael with subsequent interventions by Bernini, was built in honor of Agostino Chigi, the man who was  ableto bring to his family prestige, honor and greatness! We are at the end of the fifteenth century, the beginning of the sixteenth century. Agostino had an intuition, like many others of his countrymen (he was from Siena): he opened a bank to receive and lend money with interest. In short, a real banker. But the entrepreneurial spirit was not the only useful requisite to be rich and important... it took courage, resourcefulness, luck, affability, knowledge of the centers of power and of the economy of the context in which one moves, and so on. And Agostino Chigi had all these qualities.

In particular he soon found himself having very fruitful contacts (especially for him), with numerous popes! It was above all the relationship with Alexander VI Borgia that made him rich, famous and well known. He will lend the pope the money to finance the military expeditions of his son, the famous Cesare "Valentino" Borgia, just to name one. But for Agostino Chigi this was not enough, and therefore he stipulated excellent relations also with the successor, and bitter enemy, of Alexander VI: Giuliano della Rovere, who became pontiff with the name of Julius II following the Conclave. of 1503, celebrated on the death of Alexander VI. Above all, thanks to the new pope, Agostino Chigi was able to develop and enlarge one of its most profitable activities: the extraction of alum from the quarries and mines located north of Rome, where today the Municipality of Allume stands. Agostino Chigi projected an aqueduct and a real village for the workers and an incredible mining plant. Moreover, he was able to ingratiate himself with Julius II donating, at a very low price, a land owned by the Chigi family that the pope was trying to buy because, as the Pope claimed, a few years earlier it had belonged to the Della Rovere family. Not a small tribute and favor, so much so that later pope Julius II gave to the Chigi the opportunity to place the symbols of the two families on the same coat of arms!

You will have understood how much Agostino Chigi counted in politics and in the economy not only of Rome, but of the whole Italian peninsula. Not only that, because it is estimated that Chigi was, to all intents and purposes, one of the richest men in Europe of the early sixteenth century. It is no coincidence that he commissioned various projects, from private chapels in Rome to the one now known as the Farnesina Villa (a wonderful renaissance building that you can see here). Try to think about the Palazzo Chigi, today the seat of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic. Art, then, at the time was also an optimal tool to show one's opulence and influence. Therefore it is not a coincidence that Agostino Chigi used the best masters on the square, starting with Raphael, for his commissions and projects. A very important man for the time, therefore, who died in Rome in 1520 (in the same year as Raphael's death, with whom he had an excellent collaborative and professional relationship). A man who, between various scandals (he married a courtesan, for example) managed to navigate the troubled waters of the politics of the time, in which friends could become enemies in a flash, in which alliances had to be made to then dissolve them if necessary. In that world, however, Agostino was able to move wonderfully, so much so that he deserved, let's say so, a monument that is the very symbol of eternity: a pyramid that has always symbolized a time that never ends...