Page 190 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Rome

188  ROME AREA B Y AREA

w San Clemente

San Clemente provides an opportunity to travel back through three layers
of history. At street level, there is a 12th-century church; underneath this
lies a 4th-century church; and below that are ancient Roman buildings,
including a Temple of Mithras. Mithraism, an all-male cult imported from
Persia in the 1st century BC, was a rival to Christianity in Imperial Rome.
The upper levels are dedicated to St. Clement, the fourth pope, who
was exiled to the Crimea and martyred by being tied to an anchor and
drowned. His life is illustrated in some of the frescoes in the 4th-century
church. The site was taken over in the 17th century by Irish Dominicans,
who still continue the excavation work begun by Father Mullooly in 1857.

. Cappella di Santa Caterina
The restored frescoes by the
15th-century Florentine artist
Masolino da Panicale show scenes
from the life of the martyred
St. Catherine of Alexandria.

18th-century Facade
Twelfth-century
columns were used
in the arcade.

. 11th-century
Frescoes
Commissioned
Piscina by the de Rapiza
This deep pit was discovered in family, one shows
1967. It could have been used the story of a boy
as a font or fountain. found alive in St.
Clement’s tomb
beneath the
KEY Black Sea.
1 1st–3rd-century temple
and buildings
2 4th-century church
3 12th-century church AD 10
4 Entrance to the church is through Catacomb c.88–97 Papacy
a door in Via di San Discovered in 1938 and of St. Clement
Giovanni in Laterano. dating from the 5th or
6th century, it contains AD 64 Nero’s fire
5 Temple of Mithras destroys area
16 wall tombs known
as loculi.

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