Santa Teresa delle Suore Carmelitane Missionarie Teresiane is an early 20th century convent and public chapel at Via Vincenzo Monti 31/B. This is in the Gianicolense quarter, near the Trastevere train station.
The dedication is to St Teresa of Jesus.
History[]
The convent here was founded as the Generalate (headquarters) of the Teresian Carmelite Missionary Sisters (Suore Carmelitane Missionarie Teresiane) shortly after they received papal approval in 1902. They had been founded on the Spanish island of Minorca in 1861 by Blessed Francis Palau y Quer.
It is also also a public dependent chapel of the parish of Santi Francesco e Caterina, Patroni d’Italia.
Appearance[]
The chapel amounts to a small rectangular church in a neo-Baroque style. It is part of the convent edifice, but is under its own pitched and tiled roof and has an architectural identity.
There is a spectacular neo-Baroque façade in now in pale blue after a recent repainting, with architectural features tricked out in white. This has a pair of gigantic, wide pilasters supporting a triangular pediment, and the central vertical zone of each pilaster is recessed with a white border. At the top of each there is no capital, but an inverted lunette or semi-circular device containing a star. The pediment contains a small round window.
The extremely ornate doorway occupies almost the whole height of the recessed central zone of the façade, and is approached by a tall flight of stairs beginning between two gate pillars bearing imitation gas lamps. The actual doorway is flanked by a pair of blind pilasters each enlivened with five regularly spaced horizontal rectangular blocks, and which support a thin horizontal cornice. Fitted between the lintel and the latter is a blank Baroque tablet. On top of the pilasters, above this first cornice, is a pair of doubletted posts each with a bulls-eye motif, and these support a larger projecting cornice. A pair of thin volutes arranged horizontally is fitted into the gap between the cornices.
Above the second cornice is the coat-of-arms of the congregation richly decorated with volutes and flower sprays, which is flanked by a pair of flaming torch motifs decorated with tassels.
A little bell-cote or campanile is over the near right hand side wall, having pairs of volutes above the round-headed aperture instead of a pediment.
Liturgy[]
Mass is celebrated publicly, according to the Diocese:
Weekdays 6:30;
Sundays and Solemnities 10:30.