Who Killed Caravaggio: The Murder Scene and the Paintings

Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni in 1606, fled Rome with a price on his head and died four years later in circumstances nobody has settled since. This walk covers both halves of that: the paintings and the crime scene. It goes to the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi for the three canvases on the life of Matthew, and to Sant'Agostino for the Madonna di Loreto, with Raphael's Isaiah on a pillar nearby. Then it leaves the churches and goes to the street where Tomassoni was killed, to the house in Vicolo del Divino Amore where Lena lived, the model whose face is on more than one altarpiece and whose reputation caused trouble, and to the house where Caravaggio himself lived, on the same lane. The route was built to work in any weather. It alternates open squares with the cool interiors of churches, there is shade in the hot months and shelter when it rains, and there are places to sit. It ends at Palazzo Borghese, home of the family that ended up owning much of what Caravaggio painted, and of the Circolo della Caccia, the closed 17th-century club that met inside it.