Meeting Point

Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore, 00185 Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, Italy

Santa Prassede

A modest door on a side street opens onto one of the great treasures of early medieval Rome. Pope Paschal I rebuilt the church around 820 and filled it with the relics of martyrs carried in from the catacombs. In the apse, Christ steps forward on clouds of fire, presented by Peter and Paul to the sisters Praxedes and Pudentiana, while the pope himself holds a model of the church, his square halo marking him as still alive. Then the Chapel of San Zeno, built by Paschal as a tomb for his mother Theodora: the most complete Byzantine-style mosaic room in Rome, where four angels lift Christ's portrait into a vault of pure gold. Light it up with a coin. Next to it stands the column brought from Jerusalem in 1223, believed to be the one Christ was tied to.

Santa Maria Maggiore

The greatest church in the world dedicated to the Virgin, and the only papal basilica that still keeps its 5th-century heart. Pope Sixtus III built it in the 430s, just after the Council of Ephesus proclaimed Mary Mother of God, and covered it in mosaics to celebrate the decision. Along the nave, panels tell the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Moses and Joshua like an illustrated scroll; on the triumphal arch, the Christ Child receives the Magi on a throne, surrounded by angels like an imperial court. In the apse, Jacopo Torriti's 1295 Coronation of the Virgin shines above the altar. We also look up at the gilded ceiling, said to use the first gold from the Americas, and hear the legend of the snow that fell here on 5 August to mark out the church.

Santa Pudenziana

Below today's street level, this small basilica was built around 400 AD inside a Roman bath hall, on the spot where tradition places the house of the senator Pudens, who hosted Saint Peter. Its apse mosaic is the oldest in any Roman church, and still feels like a page of the ancient world: Christ sits on a jewelled throne like an emperor, the apostles wear the togas of Roman senators, and behind them rises the skyline of a city with porticoes, domes and a golden cross on the hill of Golgotha. In the sky appear, for the first time in Christian art, the four winged symbols of the evangelists. Two women crown the apostles, the Church of the Jews and the Church of the Gentiles.

Down into Monti

From the hilltop basilicas we walk down into Rome's oldest district, once the Suburra, the crowded and noisy quarter where Julius Caesar grew up. Two thousand years later, Monti is still a neighbourhood of its own, where Romans live, shop and meet in the square for a coffee. We wander its lanes and squares among medieval towers, hidden churches, ivy-covered palazzi and the workshops of local artisans, following the route that best suits you on the day: history, shopping, photo spots or simply the best place for an espresso.

Ending Point

End near the Imperial Forums