San Luigi dei Francesi. The Church of St. Louis of the French is a Roman Catholic church in Rome, not far from Piazza Navona.
The church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, to St. Denis the Areopagite and St. Louis IX, king of France. The church was designed by Giacomo della Porta and built by Domenico Fontana between 1518 and 1589, and completed through the personal intervention of Catherine de' Medici, who donated to it some property in the area.
It is the national church in Rome of France. It is a titular church.
The current Cardinal-Priest of the Titulus S. Ludovici Francorum de Urbe is André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris. When the Saracens burned the Abbey of Farfa in 898, a group of refugees settled in Rome.
Some monks remained in Rome even after their abbot Ratfredus rebuilt the abbey. By the end of the tenth century, the Abbey of Farfa owned in Rome churches, houses, windmills and vineyards. A bull of Holy Roman Emperor Otto III in 998 confirms the property of three churches: Santa Maria, San Benedetto and the oratorio of San Salvatore. When they ceded their property to the Medici family in 1480, the church of Santa Maria became the church of Saint Louis of the French. Cardinal Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici commissioned Jean de Chenevière to build a church for the French community in 1518. Chenevières' design was for an octagonal, centrally planned edifice. Building was halted when Rome was sa