Pauline Chapel

The Pauline Chapel is a papal chapel in the Apostolic Palace, created during the renovations commissioned by Pope Paul III around the Sala Regia. Construction began in 1537 to a design by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Vatican documentation indicates that the work was already sufficiently advanced for Mass to be celebrated there on All Saints’ Day in November 1538, although the building campaign continued into the early 1540s.

The chapel is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, a dedication that gives the space its central theological and institutional meaning within the papal palace. Michelangelo undertook the two works for which the chapel is especially famous after completing the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. He painted the Conversion of Saint Paul from late 1542 to July 1545 and then the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, completed in March 1550.

Later sixteenth-century popes continued the decorative programme, especially under Gregory XIII. The chapel is significant as a functioning papal sacred space and as the setting of Michelangelo’s last two major frescoes. Its inclusion in Templestan rests on documented liturgical use, dedication and international artistic importance, not on an apparition, miracle or healing tradition. It forms part of the Apostolic Palace within the Vatican City UNESCO World Heritage property.