The Renovation of Roman Basilicas in the Seventeenth Century and the Problem of BORROMINI as “Restorer”

The essay aims to explore the renovation that BORROMINI carried out in St. John Lateran (1646-1650), the first basilica commissioned by Constantine and the Cathedral of Rome. For a long time, this work enjoyed little consideration because of the limitations that BORROMINI had to take into account. But these limits are actually the result of a long debate and new conservative criteria that start from the controversy that followed the destruction (in 1605) of what remained of St. Peter’s Basilica. And these controversies generated in the following decades a new attitude towards Christian antiquity, passing through successive stages: from the renovation of St. Sebastian Outside the Walls, to that of St. Chrysogonus, to the highly conscious interventions promoted by Cardinal Francesco BARBERINI for the Leonian Triclinium. A critical and operational path at the end of which BORROMINI marks new levels of quality that make us understand the otherness of the past and prepares creative solutions that mark a fundamental stage in his evolution.