We had lunch at Agata e Romeo, another Michelin star restaurant (Rome has four in total). This is a smallish place on a busy avenue. The interior was very cozy with an amazing wine cellar. Excellent, traditional Roman cuisine, which tends to be heavier on offal than you'd expect. The chef is a bit of a celebrity and the place has a definite buzz about it, although service is more efficient than friendly. (Food-15, Decor-16, Service-12).



After lunch we hit our last major church, the nearby Santa Maria Maggiore, the subject of these photos. The church was built on a pagan temple to Juno around 350 AD, but has expanded dramatically through the centuries and has bits and pieces from all different architectural styles. The church was a mainstay on the pilgrim circuit because it supposedly contains the manger where Jesus was born. I guess it's possible, but it's just a few pieces of wood tied up with iron, so who knows. Anyway, today the wood is upstaged by the mosaics, covering much of the church walls and dating from the eleventh century.

The church of San Clemente is probably the most interesting in Rome, with layer upon layer of religious history and works of art from almost each of the last twenty centuries.

The story begins in the crumbling alley in the picture, part of the ancient Roman city that burned while Nero famously fiddled. The somewhat less spooky next level is a temple to Mithras built by Roman soldiers on top of the charred remains of the old city around the year 200 AD. The adherents sat in the chairs lining the wall, and shared communal suppers on the white altar in the middle, while behind this room is another where boys were taught the complicated details of the religion. When Christianity became the state religion, a Christian church was built on top of the Mithraic temple (the plain white windowless building in the photo). This church was then burned by the Normans as part of the general destruction of the neighborhood in 1084, whereupon the stunning presentday church was built on the rubble. The current church is decorated with some of the best mosaics in Rome, plus some relics of the earlier church.

We continued our pilgrimage to the Santi Quattro Coronati, church of the four saints. The identity of the namesake saints is lost to history, but their protective powers couldn't have been very strong, since the church was burned to the ground by invading Normans in 1084. For this reason, the church was rebuilt as a fortress, with incredibly thick walls, two sets of gates at the entrance, and a belltower that doubles as a defense post. There are some peeling frescoes on the walls, and a nice cloister out back still used as a convent.

The surrounding area contains dozens of churches, some of the oldest and most neglected in the city. We first stopped at Santa Maria Dominica, the fairly conventional church with the arched facade. Very old, some very old mosaics, nothing special. The next church, the round Santo Stefano Rotondo, is one of the world's oldest surviving church buildings, from around 400 AD. It's a pretty powerful religious statement if you're so inclined because it's so pure, earnest and quiet, although a thousand years later the church decided it would be more powerful with frankly disturbing frescoes of saints being martyred in disgusting ways.

There's a lot going on in the church and the neighboring religious complex, far too much to bore you with here (although if I had a photo of the silver jars on the altar containing the heads of Saints Peter and Paul I would have included that as a conversation piece). I do have a photo of the original bronze doors to the ancient Roman Senate, which the church thought would look better here. The lovely columned cloisters surrounding a pretty garden are definitely the nicest part of the cathedral, and surprisingly rare in Rome.

The square in front of the church is a bit scruffy, but if you can make out a dark brick building in the photo, that's the first baptistery in Christianity, built by emperor Constantine around 320. It became the template for all the other baptisteries in Italy, although future generations had the good sense to decorate the exterior. Next to it is part of the Lateran Palace, the popes' main home until the move to the Vatican. The only part of the palace that is a bit open to visitors is the Santa Scala, the staircase with the kneeling pilgrims crawling up it. If you're a believer, this staircase was brought here from Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem, where Jesus walked after being sentenced to death. If you choose to see it, you have to walk up on your knees, although famously Martin Luther was doing that when half way up the stairs he heard a voice telling him that "the just shall live by faith, not by pilgrimage", whereupon he scandalously stood up and walked down the steps. At the top of the steps, and definitely not open to the public, is the pope's private chapel, which, as the name implies, is only accessible to popes. Inside is a portrait of Jesus painted by angels, so I'm guessing the church could raise a lot of money if they charged admission to see it.

The next day we visited the neglected Lateran area, which is tourist free despite its historical importance and wealth of sights. One reason for the neglect is its distance from the center, aligned against the ancient Roman wall that surrounds the city and most tourists never know exists. The Lateran is a huge area, originally owned by the Roman Emperor Constantine's wife. As you may remember, Constantine was the emperor who converted to Christianity in the fourth century and made Rome the center of the new religion. What you may have forgotten was that Constantine drowned his wife in her bathtub, then donated the palace to the church, where it built San Giovanni in Lateran. The popes lived next door for a thousand years, and the Lateran was basically the Vatican of the middle ages. When the popes permanently moved to the Vatican and St. Peter's became the popes' church, San Giovanni remained the seat of Rome's cardinal, and hence its cathedral status.



Since the church housed the papacy during its most depraved centuries, there are a lot of good stories to tell. Probably the best was the trial of Pope Formosus, which took place in the cathedral in 897. His successor pope, Stephen VII, hated Formosus and put him on trial as a usurper, despite the fact that he was dead. So Formosus' corpse was dug up, and seated in the church, whereupon Stephen grilled him with questions for two days. Formosus was allowed time to answer the questions, but, being dead, failed to do so, whereupon he was declared a fraud. Stephen then cut off the three fingers Formosus used for papal blessings, then had the rest of the corpse thrown in the river. I'm not sure, but I believe neither of these popes were subsequently canonized.