Today is our last full day in Roman and it was filled with visiting churches. In the morning we took a tour of the Vatican, it was good but honestly too crowded to fully enjoy. Afterwards we visited the pantheon, which is very impressive. Afterwards we got gelato and headed to what ended up being a surprisingly impressive church, the Basilica of Saint Clement.
The basilica dates to 1123 dedicated to Pope Clement I. In 1861 the priest started doing some excavation underneath the church. He found the remains of a 4th century basilica. And he dug some more and found a 1st century Roman pagan temple. Visiting this church you can visit the excavations and step through three layers of history of Rome. And the best thing is that even though its only a few minutes from the colosseum there are very few people there.
At the ground level is a basilica about 900 years old. This place would be quite the tourist attraction on its own if it weren’t the 900 other churches in Rome it has to compete with. An interesting piece of history is that Irish Dominicans have owned the basilica for the past 400 years and during World War II the church was under Irish diplomatic immunity. And so they let Jewish services happen in the church under their protection.
Moving one layer down you move over 1000 years into the past to the 4th century basilica. There are several remarkedly well preserved frescos of biblical scenes. The church was relatively significant during its time with a few papal elections occurring there.
Then moving another level down you travel to the 1st century Rome. There are actually the remains of a couple buildings, a temple, an aristocrat’s house, and possibly a building relating to the Roman mint. In the photo is a temple used by the Cult of Mithras. You can see the altar with a carving of Mithras killing a bull dating from the 1st century. It was kind of surreal walking through these ancient roman ruins under the basilica.
Afterwards we got pasta for dinner and more gelato. Now its time to pack up and head to Naples.