Cappella dell'Ospedale San Pietro Fatebenefratelli is a mid 20th century hospital and convent chapel at Via Cassia 600 in the Tor di Quinto suburban district.
The dedication of the hospital is to St Peter the Apostle.
History 
Edit
The Order of Hospitallers of St John of God (nicknamed Fatebenefratelli) have been in Rome since 1584, when they settled on the Tiber Island and founded a hospital next to the church of San Giovanni Calibita. This hospital survives to the present day. Both it and the religious order were named after St John of God (the hospital is now the Ospedale San Giovanni Calabita, however).
In 1953, the Order built a large new hospital on the Via Cassia, and this has become its main focus of activity in Rome. The convent attached to it is now the headquarters of the Italian Province, while the Generalate is based at what was intended to be a training college -see Cappella dei Fatebenefratelli.
Appearance Edit
Layout Edit
The hospital is a huge complex on a symmetrical plan, with several large wings of three, four and five storeys mostly in red brick infilling reinforced concrete frames. The style of the first phase of the project is vaguely neo-Renaissance, comprising three three-storey flat-roofed wings around a longitudinally rectangular garden courtyard. The main hospital entrance is at the far end of this, and the garden contains a prominent statue of St John of God on a very high open plinth.
However, the chapel is round the back, with its own facing the heliport. It is in a much more modernist style. The ediifice is on the plan of a Latin cross, with a short central nave flanked by wide structural side aisles. Then comes a very wide transept, the same width as the nave and aisles, and finally a deep rectangular sanctuary. The latter inserts into a recess between two five-storey wings, much higher than the chapel itself.
Fabric Edit
The design is dominated by the roofing arrangements. The crossing of the transept has a small dome on the plan of a chamfered square, having a low drum. The longer cardinal sides each have a window which is in the form of a laterally stretched octagon with very low vertical sides. The low dome itself is sheathed in grey metal, with four triangular pitches on the cardinal sides and four narrow rectangular pitches on the diagonal sides. The latter meet at a square, occupied by a flèche.
The dome does not occupy the entire area of the square crossing of the transept, but is surrounded by a flat area in a grey composition. This is continued over the transept ends, nave and sanctuary by roofing areas which slope down to the ends of the cross in the chapel's plan. This means that the chapel eaves slope, except at the ends of the cross in the plan.
The nave side aisles have lower roofs, with steeper pitches than for the main roof.
The entrance has an open loggia occupying the full width of the central nave. It has an arcade of three arches, the central one being larger and having its archivolt extending into a gable in the otherwise single-pitched roof. Above this loggia, the frontage has a stretched octagonal window in the same style as those in the dome drum. A similar window is below the eaves in the transept ends and in the sanctuary wall.
The central nave side walls and the transept side walls each have a window in the form of a narrow right-angled triangle, the hypotenuse paralleling the slope of the roofline above. There are a total of six of these windows.
Liturgy Edit
The chapel has a full series of liturgical events, rivalling those in a parish church of the city.
Mass is celebrated:
Weekdays 6:30 (with Lauds), 17:00;
Sundays and Solemnities 6:30 (with Lauds), 9:00, 10:30, 17:00.
Rosary and Vespers is celebrated daily at 19:15, followed by Benediction on Sundays and Solemnities.
