Often overlooked because of its modest exterior and unprepossessing entrance, the Basilica of Santa Prassede on the Esquiline Hill in Rome contains one of the most extraordinary cycles of Byzantine-style mosaics in the city. Built in its present form in the early ninth century by Pope Paschal I, it survives largely as he left it. Paschal commissioned the basilica around 822 AD as a replacement for an earlier church on the site, dedicating it to Saint Praxedes, an early Roman martyr believed to have collected the blood of her fellow Christians after their executions. The new building was a deliberate revival of the early Christian basilica plan, looking back to a Rome the popes of the early ninth century were keen to claim as their inheritance. The mosaics that line the apse, the triumphal arch and the small Zeno Chapel are the work of Greek-trained craftsmen brought to Rome by the pope and are among the finest examples of the Byzantine influence on western art at the time. The apse shows Christ, Saints Peter and Paul presenting the saints Praxedes and Pudentiana, and Pope Paschal himself, square-haloed to mark him as still living, presenting the church. The small Cappella di San Zeno, off the right aisle, is fully covered in gold-ground mosaics that turn the tiny room into a glittering jewel, and was praised by medieval pilgrims as the Garden of Paradise. A fragment of a column said to be that to which Christ was tied during the flagellation, brought to Rome in the thirteenth century, is preserved in a separate chapel. The basilica also holds the tomb of the medieval Cardinal Anchera, a fine fifteenth-century pavement, and a series of side chapels with later baroque decoration that contrast sharply with the much older mosaic work in the apse. Just a short walk from Santa Maria Maggiore, the church is easily overlooked, but its mosaics alone repay the visit, and few interiors in Rome give as direct a sense of the visual culture of the popes who ruled Rome in the early Middle Ages.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Via di Santa Prassede 9A, Rome, Italy

Opening Date: 01/01/0822