One reason to visit the churches of Rome is to see the various layers of Roman history embedded in them. I'm reading the sections on the Centro Storico in
National Geographic Traveler: Rome along with my iPhone so that I can look up the images of each site on Google. That way I hope they stick in my mind a bit better and I'll know what they are talking about. Of course it means it takes about an hour to read each page because of all the distracting side trips that Google leads me on.
I started with the chapter "Pantheon to Piazza Venezia" and of course we'll all go see the Pantheon which was built by the Emperor Hadrian as a pagan temple and also as an astronomical instrument (depending on where the light from the oculus struck the floor at different times of the year). Even Mother remembers the Pantheon from their 1958 Triumph Rally through Europe. The Pantheon was converted early to a Christian church and so survived pretty much intact, although its bronze was carried away a couple of times. Since we are there in November we'll have to run visit it during a rainstorm when the water comes pouring in through the oculus. There are few major artworks inside but there is the tomb of Raffaello.
Very close to the Pantheon is Santa Maria sopra Minerva, originally built over a temple to the Roman goddess of war and wisdom (?)
Minerva, equated with the Greek goddess Athena. The exterior is early Renaissance but the interior is a lovely Gothic with soaring blue ceilings which is enough reason to visit it. Evidently I'm partial to Gothic and less carried away by the Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque, especially the exteriors, although maybe I should find out exactly what the latter are characterized by before I say anything. While in the area, we should hop into the Jesuit churches of San'Ignatio and Il Gesu, since they are nearby and also take a look at the Borsa, the Italian stock exchange with its 11 Corinthian columns dating from 145 AD embedded into it.
And then, (or maybe we should do this one first when our legs are fresh) we should walk the 124 steps up the Campidoglio (the
Capitoline Hill) to Santa Maria d'Aracoeli which was built on the ruins of a temple to
Juno, the patron goddess of Rome, and has 22 recycled Roman columns in its interior. The DK guide says that there is a popular belief that if you climb the 124 steps on your knees, you'll win the national lottery...
But it is San Clemente, near the Colosseum, that really shows the layers of Roman history. Looking for images of San Clemente, I ran across this August 2013 blog posting by Ex Urbe on
The Shape of Rome, which begins with the new mayor of Rome announcing his intention to destroy one of the city’s central roads, the Via dei Fori Imperiali, built by Mussolini, details the multiple layers of historic construction underneath the church of San Clemente, and ends with the geologic and social processes that created these layers of construction in Rome, and why Rome is so unique in that sense. It's a long article but very informative and one I will reread before visiting.
And for a walk around "medieval Rome" follow the walk sketched out by Delightfully Italy:
A dive in medieval Rome. He takes you to San Clemente but also to Santissimi Quattro Coronati (a 4th/5th century church), Santo Stefano Rotondo (built in the 5th century on the remains of a 2nd-century Mithraic temple and featuring 34 frescos of martyrdom), and Santi Giovanni e Paolo (built in 398 over the home of two Roman soldiers, John and Paul, martyred under Julian in 362). "What you can’t miss is the visit to the original Roman Houses buried under the church, and discovered in the 19th century."
So many layers!! Just like in Fellini's 1972 movie
Roma, the scene where they are
excavating for the Roman subway and run into a buried Roman house, and of course they have to halt excavation and the air entering the caverns destroys the frescos, sort of what happened to the madonna fresco in San Clemente, which was good in the sense that it laid bare the original Empress Theodora beneath it.
