The lunar phenomena of the Moon standstills were introduced by Alexander Thom in the Sixties, but fiercely contested by many archeoastronomers, including Bradley E. Schaefer (2017) that do not accept their cultural relevance in ancient and indigenous astronomy. Recently the evidence for such lunistices in past cultures and architectures has been positively reappraised by Gonzales-Garcia and Belmonte (2019), but the discussion is still going on.  

We present a possible case of intentional alignment towards the northern lunistice in one of the most famous city planning of the late Italian Renaissance: namely the Sistine Axis, the centre of the new urban arrangement for Rome devised by Sixtus V and his architect and engineer Domenico Fontana (1585-1590). The stretch that connects the obelisks of S. Maria Maggiore and Trinità dei Monti is in fact oriented towards an azimuth of 307° +/- 1°, with an elevation of the horizon of about 1.5° (the Monte Mario hill, where the Astronomical Observatory of Rome was transferred in the XXth century), an alignment that transforms the urban “canyon” in a telescopic framing of the moon at its most northern setting point (taking into account the local horizon). This section of the ancient “via Felice” (from the name of Papa Peretti) is a natural extension of the axis of the famous basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, a fact that strongly suggests a connection with the original paleochristian church orientation, conceived in order to celebrate the Virgin Mary and her celestial symbol (Spinazzé, 2016).  

On the other hand, the sky and its metaphors were certainly in the mind of Sixtus and of his architects, as shown in a contemporary map drawn by the courtier Giovan Francesco Bordino with the road network around the basilica explicitly represented in “syderis formam”, that is in the shape of a star.  Furthermore, the lunar theme is reiterated in the Renaissance decorations inside the church, in the famous Ludovico Cardi’s fresco of the Virgin Mary in the vault of the Pauline Chapel, that with his moon full of craters pays homage to his friend Galileo and to the recent publication of the Sydereus Nuncius. Finally, we provide later iconographic evidence of the connection Santa Maria Maggiore-moon cycles from a XVIIth century engraving published by the dutch engineer Cornelis Meijer, a member of the Accademia Fisico-Matematica founded by Christin of Sweden and led by Giovanni Ciampini.

For the next year 2025, peak of the northern lunistice season, the INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Rome and the Virtual Telescope Project plan a joint, public promotion of this fascinating phenomenon, a project that will stress once again the profound bond that has always connected Rome to the sky.