Santa
Maria del Priorato (also called Saint Mary on the Aventine) is the monastery
church of the Priory of the Knights of Malta and is dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin Mary. The original church was
built in 939 CE, when Alberic II of Spoleto gave the original Roman palace to
Odo of Cluny who converted into a Cluniac Benedictine monastery.
When
the monastery was dissolved in the 14th-century, the Knights of Malta acquired
it. They rebuilt the church in the 16th century and sought to improve the
appearance in the 18th century, adding a piazza with obelisks and stelae with
emblems and other references to the military and naval associations of the
Knights of Malta and the Rezzonico family heraldry.
