Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is a sanctuary in the Apostolic Palace, the official habitation of the Pope, in Vatican City. Initially known as the Cappella Magna, the house of prayer takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who re-established it in the vicinity of 1477 and 1480. Since that time, the house of prayer has filled in as a position of both religious and functionary ecclesiastical action. Today it is the site of the Papal conference, the procedure by which another pope is chosen.

The distinction of the Sistine Chapel lies predominantly in the frescos that enliven the inside, and most especially the Sistine Chapel roof and The Last Judgment by Michelangelo.During the rule of Sixtus IV, a group of Renaissance painters that included Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Roselli, made a progression of frescos portraying the Life of Moses and the Life of Christ, balance by ecclesiastical pictures above and trompe l'oeil drapery underneath.

These works of art were finished in 1482, and on 15 August 1483, Sixtus IV commended the main mass in the Sistine Chapel for the Feast of the Assumption, at which function the house of prayer was sanctified and devoted to the Virgin Mary.