Latter-day Saint Life

Italians Wowed by Michelangelo Motif in Rome Temple

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The first Italians to tour the new Rome Italy Temple stopped just inside the front door Monday and began to point and smile at something familiar, even though none had ever been inside a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before.

There in a rug in the foyer — and soon they found it throughout the temple in stained glass, in staircase railings and engraved in the floors and walls — was a unique oval motif created by Michelangelo nearly 500 years ago and familiar to most Romans today, one with added symbolism in a Latter-day Saint temple.

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"This is from city hall, right?" local Italian politicians and journalists asked excitedly.

"It's very Roman," said Elder Massimo De Feo, an Italian and a General Authority Seventy of the church. "They were smiling because they recognized something that they they could connect to immediately."

The design has meaning beyond the architect's desire to tie the temple to Rome's history, art and architecture.

Lead image from Newsroom
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