The 7 Essential Churches in Rome to Visit
GettySt. Peter’s Basilica
The world’s largest—and most visited—church is the seat of the papacy, in Vatican City, that ecclesiastical “island” in the middle of Rome. Queue up in the key-shaped courtyard, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Try to find the colored pavestones, one on either side of the fountain, where you can stand and look at the many curved rows of columns. Standing on this precise spot creates an optical illusion; the rows of columns perfectly line up, so there appears only to be one. Inside St. Peter’s, the scale and soaring height is meant to humble all its visitors (note that the letters written inside the dome are each 2 meters—6.6 feet—tall). What you see today is largely the work of Bernini, but he merely completed a building centuries in the making, with Michelangelo responsible for the cupola, and Raphael and Bramante assisting with the architecture. If you can press your way through the throngs of tourists, take a look at Michelangelo’s Pieta, completed when he was only 24, the work that made him famous. But no one believed it was his, so he carved “Michaela[n]gelus Bonarotus Florentin[us] Facieba[t]” (“Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence Made It”) onto the sash across Mary’s chest. If you're not convinced that this is the world's largest church, lines on the floor mark where all the other major churches would fit inside St. Peter’s.
GettyBasilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls
The founders of Christianity were Saints Peter and Paul. Peter, not a Roman citizen, was executed for his faith by being crucified upside-down (at his request, as he felt unworthy of being executed in the same way as Jesus). Roman citizens were legally protected against the more unpleasant execution methods, and so Saint Paul was beheaded at the site of this church, originally founded by Emperor Constantine, when he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The name “Outside the Walls” refers to the Aurelian walls of the city (finished in 275), which successfully repelled many invaders, including the Saracens who, after conquering Sicily in 827, attacked Rome in 846. Unfortunately, as the name implies, the original church built here was outside the walls, and was leveled. The rebuilt church is studded with glorious 13th-century mosaics that glimmer in the light, making a stroll through it feel like walking inside a giant gilded and bejeweled reliquary.
GettyArchbasilica of St. John Lateran
Perhaps the most impressive church in Rome, aside from St. Peter’s, is the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which is the cathedral of the city of Rome. (Recall that Saint Peter’s is, technically, in its own jurisdiction, Vatican City, much as Washington, as capital of the U.S., is in the District of Columbia.) Its magnificent interior includes six papal tombs and colossal statues of the 12 apostles, each holding their hagiographic icon, the object associated with their martyrdom. Sculpted in the first decade of the 18th century, each apostle statue was paid for by a different prince (the pope paid for St. Peter's), and a who’s-who of top sculptors of the era were commissioned to make various statues, in a sort of open competition—see which you like best (my favorite is Giuseppe Mazzuoli’s St. Philip, shown treading on a dragon).
GettyBasilica of St. Mary Major
Near the Termini train station in an under-touristed part of town, this basilica houses a miracle-working image of the Virgin Mary as protectress of the Roman people, called Salus Populi Romani. Many churches in Rome contain an icon, often the oldest artwork on display, which was thought to heal those who prayed before it. This one was actually crowned by Pope Gregory XVI in 1838, an honor given to select miraculous images, usually of the Virgin Mary, effectively canonizing them and legally granting the image the right to wear a crown, as if they were secular royalty. The Holy Crib, in which the baby Jesus is said to have lain, is found here in a lavish gold reliquary, and the church boasts its own Sistine Chapel, not to be confused with the one Michelangelo painted across town—“Sistine Chapel” simply refers to the fact that a pope called Sixtus established it.
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AlamyBasilica of St. Lawrence Outside-the-Walls
St. Lawrence had one of history’s great last words. Said to have been roasted alive on a grill in 258—as punishment for his Christian beliefs—he allegedly taunted his torturers by saying, “Turn me over, I’m done on this side.” The St. Lawrence Grill would make a great name for a diner, though I think only fellow art historians would find it funny. Lawrence’s execution took place where this church now stands, formerly the site of a small oratory built by Constantine I, the emperor who converted to Christianity (the religion of his mother, Saint Helen) in 312. The parallels between Christianity and the Roman polytheistic state religion is manifest inside the portico, in the form of a pair of ancient sarcophagi. One of the two is Christian, its original polytheistic Roman relief sculptures altered in the seventh century to turn cupid picking grapes (a reference to Bacchus, god of wine, and orgies) into cherubs, gently Christianizing sculptures. This is, in miniature, what the nascent religion of Christianity did, choosing imagery that was already familiar to polytheistic Romans (early images of Christ recall images of Apollo) and even opting for the same holidays.
AlamyBasilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem
This basilica was built in 325 as a giant house of relics brought to Rome by St. Helena, the mother of Constantine and a lifelong Christian. The floor of the basilica was originally covered in soil from Jerusalem. The relic chapel is the star attraction, renovated in 1930, where you can see artifacts purported to be the originals from Christ’s Passion, including part of one of the Holy Nails, three fragments of the True Cross (a single larger piece was moved to St. Peter’s in 1629), two thorns from the Crown of Thorns, and part of the Elogium, the panel hung on the cross that read, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” This latter relic is largely considered to be a medieval forgery, like the Shroud of Turin. There was a lively trade in fake relics throughout the Middle Ages, especially after soldiers returned from the Crusades. There are so many relics, multiples of bones of various saints, or villages’ worth of pieces of wood “from the True Cross” that they can't possibly all be real. It remains at the discretion of the faithful, to determine whether or not to believe.
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AlamySt. Sebastian Outside-the-Walls
In 2000, Pope John Paul II swapped out this farther-flung church and replaced it, as the seventh in the pilgrimage route, with the sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love. But in keeping with tradition, the route that millions of pilgrims, over hundreds of years, have taken, let’s stick with St. Philip Neri’s choice. This fourth-century church was built above the ancient catacombs where St. Sebastian was buried. Sebastian was executed for his Christian faith, first used as target practice by Roman archers, but having miraculously survived, he was later clubbed to death, and his remains laid in a warren of underground tunnels that would make Indiana Jones proud, and which can be visited today. Saints Peter and Paul were originally interred in these catacombs, but their remains, along with Sebastian’s, were moved to St. Peter’s Basilica. This proved shrewd, because the Saracen attack on Rome in 846 resulted in the destruction of the church originally built here (since it, like the church of St. Paul, was also “Outside-the-Walls”). The church you can visit today was established in the 13th century but, as with many of Rome’s churches, what you see is largely Baroque (16th century) renovations after the devastating 1527 Sack of Rome at the hands of the renegade army of Emperor Charles V Habsburg.