The angels that stayed behind

Sant'Andrea delle Fratte is wedged between later buildings, its entrance on a street too narrow to see the church head on. If you step back a few paces, the rear comes into view, and that is where the finest part of the building stands: a semicircular bell tower and a dome drum by Francesco Borromini, the architect who spent half his life fighting Bernini over the same patrons and usually lost.

Inside you find something rare. Around 1668, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned to make ten angels for the bridge leading to the Castel Sant'Angelo, each holding an instrument of the crucifixion. He carved two of them with his own hands, and of the ten angels standing on that bridge today, not one is his work.

The church is free to enter and closes for a few hours around midday. Inside, the second part of this stop is waiting for you, the story of what happened to those two angels and why they never made it to the bridge.