Cappella del Pontificio Collegio Filippino is a later 20th century college chapel at Via Aurelia 490 in the Aurelio quarter.
The college is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her aspect of Our Lady of Antipolo.
History[]
The college was founded in 1959, on the initiative of the Hierarchy of the Philippines as a place to train and educate clergy for the Philippines. The complex was completed in 1961.
Exterior[]
The college is a large, long four-storey flat-roofed block in a very uninteresting style. The fabric is in reinforced concrete with pink brick infill.
The main block is parallel to the road, but the chapel occupies a perpendicular wing in the centre at the back. The main chapel stands over a ground-level crypt. It is a six-bay flat-roofed box with blank brick walls, the bays being marked by a row of low triangular-headed windows tucked under the roofline. The rectangular plan includes sacristy accommodation at the back.
The architect of the complex was Edoardo Cherubini.
Interior[]
Main chapel[]
The concrete frame of the chapel is obvious in the interior, and gives it a basilical layout. The bays are divided by massive transverse concrete roof beams, of vertical rectangular cross-section and supported by square concrete piers which create very narrow side-aisles. The beams continue on either side to the side walls, where they terminate at short piers on top of the walls which separate the windows. The tops of the windows are longitudinal concrete beams with inverted V undersides.
The side walls and the bases of the piers are panelled in wooden planking of a warm brown colour, enlivened by dark brown wood patterning which provides a cross motif for each wall of each side bay except the first. The latter has a floating gallery over the entrance which occupies the full width of the nave, and which has a frontal in the same wood. The first pair of piers provide the main support for this gallery.
The nave floor is in a creamy white marble. The altar is on a low black marble platform, and behind it the far wall is revetted in slabs of a greyish-yellow marble. Here there is a copy of the shrine statue of Our Lady of Antipolo, housed in a large open-fronted box shrine. The back of this is in a warmer yellow marble, and its front edge is in a grey and white marble.
The frontal of the unusually wide altar is occupied by a relief featuring saints adoring Christ in what looks like patinated bronze.
Crypt[]
The best thing in the chapel is the so-called Retablo or Blessed Sacrament shrine in the crypt chapel, which incorporates a tabernacle and monstrance throne. It is in carved and varnished wood incorporating bamboo columns, and has two polychrome painted high-relief representations of Filipino martyrs in their agonies. St Lawrence Ruiz in Japan is on the left, and St Peter Calungod on Guam is on the right.
The two angels venerating the tabernacle are women in traditional Filipino dress.
The work was executed by Wifredo Layug in 2000 to commemorate the canonisation of St Peter Calungsod.