Pope Francis, who has visited more than 60 countries during his papacy, will make his final journey along the road from Vatican City to the Esquiline, one of the seven hills of Rome, where he decided to be buried in a last break from tradition.

Eschewing much of the Vatican's traditional pomp, Francis has opted for simpler funeral rites and will become the first pope in over a century to be buried outside the Vatican. His chosen resting place is the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major), one of the main four of Christendom, a site dear to him because of his devotion to Mary, Mother of God.

During an interview with Mexico's N+ television on December 2023, Pope Francis said that he decided to vastly simplify the elaborate funeral rites for a pontiff and be the first one to be buried outside the Vatican in more than a century.

The church is home of a venerated byzantine Mary icon - Salus Populi Romani (salvation of the Roman people) — where Jorge Mario Bergoglio has prayed before embarking on and returning from each overseas trip.  

Early on the morning of March 14, 2013, just hours after his election, the first pope from the Americas prayed in this church, whose gold-leaf ceiling is said to have been made from a batch of the precious metal Columbus brought back from the New World.

Francis has returned to the site at key moments in his nearly 12-year rule, including to pray for the end of the coronavirus pandemic in a deserted Rome in 2019 and after his two abdominal operations in 2021 and 2023.

Just outside the chapel with the image of Mary, stands the statue of Mary Queen of Peace, commissioned by Pope Benedict XV in 1918 to ask God to end World War One. Sitting in his wheelchair, Francis led here an international prayer service for peace in Ukraine and other war-torn places in 2022.

Pope Francis's funeral is still expected to take place in St. Peter's Square, in front of the Basilica of St. Peter, where most of his predecessors rest.

Prior to Francis, the last pope to be buried outside the Vatican was Leo XIII, who died in 1903.

Santa Maria Maggiore houses the bodies of seven popes and several religious figures, including Cardinal Bernard Law, former Archbishop of Boston, who became infamous for his role in covering up child sexual abuse by priests.

The church has dominated the Eternal City for 16 centuries. Every year on August 5, Romans gather in the Esquilino district, now one of Rome's most multi-ethnic, to celebrate the miracle of La Madonna Della Neve, or Madonna of the Snows.

A Christian legend, depicted on a 13th-century mosaic in the basilica's majestic loggia, tells of a miraculous summer snowfall which occurred in 358AD on the future site of the church.

Near the high altar of Santa Maria Maggiore is the tomb of the Baroque sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

An elegant spiral staircase, named after the Italian artist, connects the five floors of the church. Its shell shape seems to symbolize the Christian journey from earth to heaven.