A visit to the Basilica di Santa Prassede (aka Práxedes)

Dwight Peck's personal website

A month's sojourn in Italy,
Oct.-Nov. 2024

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

17 October 2024

Having just benefited from an enlightening experience in St Clement's Basilica and its mithraeum, we're crossing the Via Labicana and setting off up the hill through . . .

. . . the Parco del Colle Oppio e delle terme di Traiano ('Ancient remains in leafy public park').

We are, however, lost already, but this northern gateway looks promising.
(It's the Ufficio Culturale Egiziano, we know more or less where we are now.)

A few minutes later, we're passing the Basilica dei Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti on the
Via del Monte Oppio, looking for . . .

. . . the grand Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and there it is.

It's not the Maria Maggiore for us today, though, we're here to restore our long friendship with Santa Prassede, otherwise known as Saint Praxedes. It's one block off to the left from here.

The present entrance is through the side door these days, on the Via Santa Prassede. The original gated entrance on the Via San Martino, leading into the original courtyard, is closed up and wedged in between the Druid's Den pub and Ouali Boualem Pizza Kebab Hamburger Halal.

But the side entrance does have a good view of Santa Maria Maggiore.

We've been here a few times before, in 2008, 2011, and 2022, and it's a great favorite.

Popping through the side door, we're staring at the Chapel of the Holy Sacraments. Can't wait.

Santa Prassede, and her sister Pudentiana (who's got her own minor basilica not far from here), were reputed to be daughters of a Roman senator named Pudens who'd befriended St Paul when he was in the slammer here. There's no other early mention of the girls, and some cynics speculate that Pudentiana came from a misreading of some epigraph concerning the senator. But Pudens the Pauline pal himself is attested in a letter Paul sent to Timothy, and possibly Paul's first convert in Rome, he was himself a Christian martyr, in Nero's reign (54-68).

The two sisters were traditionally credited, from early on apparently, with having cared for persecuted Christians in the 1st century and helping them with family burials. They, too, were said to have been martyred in about AD 165, when they were 16 years old, so there's an obvious dating issue there, oh my. They began to be venerated in the 4th century and there was a church in Prassede's name since at least the 5th century, but the present church was commissioned by Pope Adrian in about 780, evidently to house her relics, and it was significantly enlarged in about 828.

This is the side chapel of St Zeno [one of the first side chapels in medieval churchs, we're told], commissioned in the early 9th century by Pope Paschal I as a a sepulchral chamber for his mother, Theodora. It's filled with mosaics -- of Christ Pantocrator and four angels on the ceiling, of Prassede and Pudentiana and two other females along the walls -- that are considered to be unique examples of the Carolingian Renaissance style in Rome. It contains a reliquary said to contain the piece of Jesus' flagellation column brought from Jerusalem in 1223 (or, as some say, by Constantine's mother St Helena on her return from finding the True Cross in 326).

The altar in the apse (dark because the coin machine to turn on the light briefly wasn't working), with the entrance to the crypt below.

That's the Chapel Olgiati in the left aisle, facing the Zeno's chapel on the right side -- it's a funerary chapel designed in 1587 by Martino Longhi the Elder for Bernardo Olgiati for his successful banking family in Rome who'd come from Como. The altarpiece of St Veronica with Christ Carrying His Cross is by Federico Zuccari.

Against the former entrance onto the front courtyard, that's the 1735 Chapel of St Peter, with an anonymous 18th century altarpiece (which we didn't see) of St Peter visiting the household of St Pudens, Prassede's putative father.

The frescoes along the walls and on the pillars were commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici after 1592 and mostly done by Stefano Pieri and Giovanni Balducci; most of them illustrate events from the Passion of Christ.

As usual, it's difficult to inspect them closely from down here on the floor (we always have to wonder that medieval folks with no spectacles were seeing up there beyond a blur).

The triumphal arch and the altar in the apse behind

The theme at the top of the triumphal arch has to do with the Second Coming of Christ and the End of Time, as described in the Book of Revelation. In the centre the Heavenly Jerusalem is seen as made of gold, with Christ and two angels with apostles and saints lined up alongside.

The high altar under its ciborium, and the entrance to the crypt in the centre. The sanctuary itself was completed in 1734, with staircases on either side of the entrance to the crypt. The ciborium includes porphyry columns believed to have been scavenged from its medieval predecessor.

One of the purposes of the building of this church (and some others in Rome) in the 9th century was to receive the remains of early Christian martyrs who'd been interred in catacombs outside the city, where in the contemporary breakdown of civil order around Rome the safety of worshipping pilgrims could no longer be assured. In most cases, as here, an imitation catacomb was placed under the high altar as a confessio (or crypt); this was usually really underground or, as here, under the raised floor of the sanctuary.

Allegedly, Saints Prassede and Pudentiana are in one of those two sarcophagi. The altar at the far end has an Cosmatesque decoration on its front, which probably came from the original altar.

Here's Kristin checking out the former people semi-under Saint Prassede's church, May 2008

The mosaic floor is amazing, but it was created in 1916 in a 'faithful and successful imitation of the Cosmatesque style'.

With a last look at the Chapel of the Sacraments, we will take our leave and go visit Prassede's sister down the block.

A lively conversation just outside the door of Prassede's basilica, one which . . .

. . . appears to have been going on at least since November 2022.

We're on the march down past the Santa Maria Maggiore two blocks to the Basilica of Saint Pudentiana on the Via Urbana. We won't be stopping in to the wonderful Maria Maggiore on this trip, but here's . . .

. . . a view of the façade of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in November 2022

And here's the apse-end of it on 17 October 2024, as we're seeking out the Basilica Pudentiana.

Somewhere down this way, maybe

Here it is, about . . .

. . . twelve feet lower than the modern street level, just like the last time we were here. But it's closed up already -- we'll come back another day.

We're looking now for the Palazzo Quirinale and have wandered into the Largo Magnanapoli, not far from the weird Torre delle Milizie, just a few blocks up from Trajan's Column.

We've always found the Tower of the Militia fascinating. Long thought to have originated with the Emperor Nero, it's now understood to be an urban family defensive tower from the early 13th century, which passed over time through the ruling clans of the Annibaldi, then the Prefetti di Vico, and Pope Boniface VIII's Caetani family, when it was enlarged and strengthened and may have rivaled the Castel Sant'Angelo as the dominant fortress in the city. It was then occupied by the Conti until 1619, by which time, after the age of medieval family warfare, it was no longer useful and was taken over by a local convent of nuns.

This way to the Quirinale.

That's the Garden of Montecavallo, we're nearly there.

A nostalgic moment: the Scuderie del Quirinale (the former stables of the palazzo) is presently a place for art exhibitions, and in 2010 we were able to get in for an exhibition of Caravaggio's works [fantastic] and in 2011 for an exhibit of Filippino Lippi's work and influences [but No Photos!!!].

The Quirinale Obelisk alongside the Palazzo

Ooooff

-- Welcome to the Piazza del Quirinale.

'Sprawling presidential palace and museum' (Google Maps)

The look downtown

[Testing my iPhone13 zoom]

And down we go. That stairway was horrible.

Oh, no way! That's the Trevi Fountain. Neither of us is anything like a fan. In fact . . . . !!!

How unsubtle!

The crowds not only gather, they often refuse to leave.

And it's not even fountaining today.

The Chiesa dei Santi Vincenzo off to the side of the fountain

-- No horses today, thanks.

Charging downtown

And now passing through the Galleria Sciarra on the Via Marco Minghetti:

'Elegant palace atrium with lavish frescoes & a glass-&-iron roof dating to the late 19th century'

Works in progress

Along the Piazza dei Santi Apostoli, looking for a bus stop

There's the central Piazza Venezia, but no buses going our way! We'll walk!

Nice looking church over there

Turns out its the Chiesa del Gesù, 'the mother church of the Jesuit order', built in 1584

It's only a coincidence that we spent some years researching the English Jesuits that were being smuggled into Elizabethan England at almost exactly that time.

-- Oh, I'll have those one of those please. Melvin will love it.

Here, along the Corso Vittore Emanuele II, is the Largo di Torre Argentina, 'Argentina Tower Square' (a papal official in 1503 named the tower after his hometown of Strasbourg, Argentoratum in Latin).

Beginning with discoveries in 1927, excavations have continued, revealing four Republican Era Roman temples (beginning in the 4th or 3rd century BC) and the ruins of Pompey's Theatre, smack in the middle of the old Campus Martius, including the spot where Julius Caesar was supposed to have been assassinated.

In 2019, Mayor Virginia Raggi commissioned the erection of walkways round the various temples, etc., so that visitors can inspect the goods more closely for a small fee.

There are interpretive information panels recreating the site and explaining the stages of the excavations, very interesting, but too much for one nearly-dinner-time flyby.

Google Maps describes the site as an 'archaeological site close to where Julius Caesar was killed, also home to a colony of cats'. The good news is that there is a taxi rank right alongside here.

Deboarding right at the church at the head of our bridge, we're . . .

. . . ready for dinner (at Sor' Eva).

Next up: The art gallery in the Palazzo Barberini

Back to Italy,
Fall 2022

Rome

This may be
a long, slow
process.