The late-thirteenth-century complex of Santa Maria in Aracoeli—with its monumental staircase erected as a votive offering in the plague year of 1348—dominated the highest part of the Capitoline Hill, in the heart of Rome, until the construction of the adjoining Vittoriano in the late 19th century. Little is known about the early medieval construction phases. A monastery and a church dedicated to the Mother of God—quae appellatur Camellaria—and to the two Saints John (the Evangelist and the Baptist) are documented on the Capitoline Hill as early as the 8th century. A version of the Chronicle of John Malalas, dating from the 7th–8th centuries, may already confirm its existence, linking it to the legend of Emperor Augustus. According to this account, on the night of Christ’s birth Augustus had a vision of the Virgin with the Child and subsequently had an altar erected with the inscription haec aram filii Dei est. In the context of this legend, the term Camellaria may refer to the camera (cubiculum) of Augustus’ palace, the place of the vision mentioned in the 12th-century Mirabilia urbis Romae. The 8th-century church was replaced by a new three-aisled building, constructed on its foundations probably during the pontificate of Antipope Anacletus II (1130–1138). The basilica belonged to the influential Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria in Capitolio and its porch and bell tower (remnants of which survive) faced the Piazza del Campidoglio, the center of the city’s civic power. Like its predecessor, this church had its apse oriented to the north, and its nave can be located in the area of the present basilica’s transept. Several elements of the liturgical furnishings of the Benedictine basilica have survived. Most notably, the front panel of the confessio, still in situ beneath the altar in the north arm of the current transept, bears the earliest known representation of Augustus’ vision. It confirms that the liturgical orientation of this church corresponded to that of a west-facing basilica, with the Gospel ambo probably located on the left side of the schola cantorum. Parts of the Gospel ambo, reassembled in two sixteenth-century pulpits on the eastern side of the piers of the triumphal arch, allow its reconstruction (see video). Two small pillars preserved in the south pulpit, probably belonging to the presbytery enclosure—of which two marble plutei with inlays (today behind the high altar) also survive—bear the signatures of the marble workers Laurentius and his son Jacopo, and allow the furnishings to be dated to the late 12th century. The present building is the result of a major expansion carried out by the Franciscans (Friars Minor) in the second half of the 13th century. For their main convent in Rome, they obtained papal authorization in 1248/50 to settle in the Benedictine complex on the Capitoline. The enlargement of the basilica in the latter half of the 13th century involved rotating the axis of the building and its liturgical orientation toward the east, with the construction of a polygonal Gothic apse and, to the west, an imposing three-aisled body divided by eleven pairs of spolia columns. The lost fresco by Pietro Cavallini depicting the vision of Augustus in the apse and the impressive western façade, decorated with mosaics (now largely lost) on the cavetto, date to around 1300, while the funerary chapels along the aisles were constructed during the 14th and 15th centuries. The late 13th century also saw the installation of the marble pavement of the central nave—laid out in burial compartments marked by bands of opus sectile—the funerary monuments of the Savelli family and of Matteo d’Acquasparta, and mosaic panels originally in the Capocci and Colonna chapels. A significant remodeling of the basilica in the 1560s–1570s, promoted by the Counter-Reformation popes Paul IV (1559–1565) and Gregory XIII (1572–1585), led to the construction of a new rectangular apse (consecrated in 1565) and to the removal of late-medieval liturgical furnishings, including the Gothic ciborium for the miraculous icon of Maria Advocata (11th century), erected in 1372 in the central nave “in ingressu chori” by order of the notary Francesco de Felici.