For the next one I went out to the San Giovanni station, which is where the new C line comes in right now. Since I came in from the C line three days ago it was somewhere I had been already!
My target was the church that the station is named after: St. John Lateran. This church is the Episcopal seat of the diocese of Rome and the Bishop of Rome is, of course, the pope!!!! I found myself thinking about the busy-ness of bishops and cannot imagine that pressure on rope of the pressure of being pope!
Obviously this is a pilgrimage church and it is huge; the second largest church in Rome after St. Peter’s. It’s also where the heads of both Peter and Paul are kept, above the main altar in silver busts of the Saints. The art here is spectacular and surprisingly restrained for a baroque church. Across the street on the piazza is one of the Egyptian obelisks, this one with lots of hieroglyphs.
The next church would be the most plain of the churches I was to visit; also just a church, not a basilica: Santa Maria del Popolo, or, “of the people. The real pull here is a couple of paintings by Caravaggio, which I could not get good photos of because of the time of day and the way they were in the dark with just a little bit of Sunlight.
There was less art here than many of the other places I’d been, but a beautiful nativity and a really fascinating sculpture of Jesus really were real standouts.
Finally, back on the B line, one stop for San Pietro in Vincoli, or St. Peter in chains. This church claims to have the chains that held St. Peter when he was in prison, and it definitely has a Michelangelo statue of Moses. It has an elaborately frescoes half dome in front, but it looks like the frescoes have come off part of the dome. This w as a church that looks like they really need help keeping up the art they have. It is also on a piazza on a steep hill with lots of steps to get up. I definitely remember this church from our visit in 2004!
So that was my day: 6 churches, 1.5 masses, prayer in every church and more than 10 miles of walking!
Tomorrow: the catacombs!
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