Which architect is traditionally credited with designing the Sistine Chapel?

Baccio Pontelli is traditionally credited with designing the Sistine Chapel. Pontelli was a Florentine architect and woodworker active in late fifteenth-century Italy.

Construction took place during the pontificate of Pope Sixtus IV, whose name the chapel later received. The building was created as a papal chapel within the Vatican complex and was intended to support worship, ceremony, and the pope’s liturgical household.

Attribution should be understood as traditional rather than as proof that Pontelli personally executed every architectural decision. Renaissance buildings were commonly produced through complex collaborations involving patrons, architects, builders, and workshops.

The chapel’s architecture is especially important because it provides the framework for one of the world’s most famous integrated art environments. Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Rosselli, Michelangelo, and later artists worked within the room’s carefully proportioned structure.