The pharmacy above the church

From the outside, Santa Maria della Scala looks like just another church along the street, its plain facade promising very little.

Two things behind it make it special. The first is a painting that isn't here, because Caravaggio was given a commission around 1601 whose result was turned down by the religious order and can now be seen in the Louvre. The second is up on the first floor, where the Carmelite friars kept a pharmacy that served the papal household in the seventeenth century, and its cabinets and jars are still in place.

The church is free and closes for a couple of hours around midday, and you can visit the pharmacy upstairs by appointment. Inside, the second story of this stop is waiting for you, about the rejected canvas and about what that pharmacy actually was.