Sant'Apollinare alle Terme Neroniane-Alessandrine

Sant'Apollinare
Sant'Apollinare alle Terme Neroniane-Alessandrine
Facade Sant'Apollinare
41°54′04″N 12°28′24″E / 41.901044°N 12.473271°E / 41.901044; 12.473271
Country	Italy
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Website	basilica.apollinare.org
History
Founded	7th Century
Dedication	Apollinaris of Ravenna
Events	Station church for the Thursday of the fifth week in Lent.
Architecture
Status	Minor basilica
Architect(s)	Ferdinando Fuga
Style	Baroque
Groundbreaking	1742
Completed	1748
Administration
Archdiocese	Rome

Sant'Apollinare alle Terme is a titular church in Rome, Italy, dedicated to St Apollinare, the first bishop of Ravenna. It is the station church for the Thursday of the fifth week in Lent.

The church was founded in the early Middle Ages, probably in the 7th century. It is first mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis under Pope Hadrian I, using spolia from the ruins of an imperial building. The first priests who served the church were probably eastern Basilian monks who had fled from persecution during the iconoclast period.

It is listed in the Catalogue of Turin as a papal chapel with eight clerics and in 1574 was granted to the Jesuits by Pope Gregory XIII, and it was used as the church of the next-door Collegium Germanicum in the Palazzo di Sant'Apollinare, which was later united with the Hungarian College to form the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum. This remained a Jesuit institution until the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, when this church passed to the Lazarists.

In the late 17th century, the church was in a poor state of repair. Its rebuilding was considered over a long period but wasn't carried out, probably due to the lack of funds. Despite this, in 1702 a chapel was redecorated and dedicated to St Francis Xavier, and a statue of the saint commissioned from Pierre Le Gros who carved the marble with extraordinary virtuosity (the statue was preserved when the church was eventually rebuilt some 40 years later and is still ).