Our Lady of the Snows is the original name that popular fervor gave to the papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major. Legend has it that the Virgin Mary showed a noble patrician the site where it was to be built through a miraculous snowfall in midsummer. Every year on August 5th, this miraculous event is recreated, causing a shower of white petals to fall from the roof of the church to the square, evoking the blanket of snow and the purity of Mary. It is the oldest Marian shrine in the West, the first place where Christians began to implore the intercession of the Virgin. Built by Pope Sixtus III between 432 and 440, after the definition of the dogma of the Divine Maternity, it features a peculiarity that could well have been a choice of Pope Francis: contrary to tradition, the apse faces west, so that the façade looks east, that is, toward the outskirts of the city.