Basilica Parrocchiale of San Giuseppe al Trionfale

Located close to the Vatican City and made a minor basilica by Pope Paul VI in 1970, the church owes its origin to the devotion to St. Joseph of Fr. Luigi Guanella, founder of the Catholic congregations of the Servants of Charity and the Daughters of St. Mary of Divine Providence and proclaimed a saint in 2011.

However, financial support from the church and Pope Pius X, a friend of the future saint, as well as some private funding, were crucial to the construction of a new church in what would become the populous Trionfale neighborhood, at the time still a deprived suburb with fields and shacks. In addition to its architectural aspects, the church also has value in the field of urban planning because, with others in the neighborhood and in the adjoining Rione Prati (partly coeval), it tells of the anticlericalism prevalent in the late 19th century. In opposition to the Vatican, places of worship in the new neighborhoods were often built, as in this case, on secondary and less transitory streets.

The facade was designed and built by architect Aristide Leonori, who wanted to stick to the structures of ancient basilican churches. The beautiful mosaics in the lunettes above the two side doors were composed in 1937 by the Vatican Mosaic Studio. The interior has three naves, divided from each other by ten columns of Baveno granite and with a magnificent coffered ceiling, divided into finely decorated geometric compartments. The six polychrome stained glass windows in the two side aisles, which are shorter than the central one, depict episodes from the life of St. Joseph.

From the 1920s, the new church became the centerpiece of celebrations for the feast of St. Joseph, who had always been revered by the Roman people. On 19 March (a national holiday until 1976), the neighborhood would dress up festively, filling itself with lights and colorful drapes, with the ever-present stalls of the “frittellari”, or fritter makers, waiting for the procession of the saint’s statue opened by mounted Carabinieri. In recent years, the feast has once again become one of the neighborhood's fixtures, albeit in a lesser tone than in the past.