San Lorenzo in Lucina: The Sundial Beneath the Cellars
Why is it significant?
Settle into this calm square, with its cafés, its Romanesque bell tower and the low medieval portico of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, one of the oldest churches in Rome. It feels like a village. Under your feet, the Campus Martius of Augustus is still there, just out of reach.
Key Facts
| Place | San Lorenzo in Lucina: The Sundial Beneath the Cellars |
|---|---|
| Address | Via in Lucina 16A, 00186 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90320, 12.47870 |
| Part of Walk | Emperors Underfoot: Augustus and the Buried Campus Martius of Rome |
| Generated | Generated |
Settle into this calm square, with its cafés, its Romanesque bell tower and the low medieval portico of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, one of the oldest churches in Rome. It feels like a village. Under your feet, the Campus Martius of Augustus is still there, just out of reach.
The church takes its name from Lucina, a Roman lady in whose house, tradition says, early Christians gathered. A church has stood here since late antiquity, and it was rebuilt in the 12th century, when the bell tower went up. Below the floor, archaeologists have found Roman apartment buildings of the 2nd century and an early Christian baptistery, layer upon layer.
Inside, in a side chapel, is a piece of iron grill venerated as the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was roasted in 258. Legend says he told his executioners, turn me over, this side is done... which is why he is the patron saint of cooks. The French painter Nicolas Poussin, who spent most of his life in Rome and died here in 1665, is buried in this church, with a monument paid for by the writer Chateaubriand.
Now the hidden part. A few steps west, under a building on Via di Campo Marzio, archaeologists led by Edmund Buchner dug down around 1980 and, about six metres below the street, found a stretch of the great meridian: travertine slabs inlaid with bronze Greek letters naming signs of the zodiac, with notes such as the Etesian winds cease. It probably belongs to a later rebuilding of the sundial, but it is the real thing, the face of the clock whose hand you just saw, lying in the dark beneath a cellar.
And one more ghost. The Altar of Peace itself originally stood just east of this square, beside the ancient Via Flaminia, today's Via del Corso, buried under the foundations of a Renaissance palace. Its fragments turned up over almost four centuries before anyone could free the whole thing. To see where it ended up, walk west along Via del Leone, turn right into Via di Ripetta, and look for a white pavilion of glass by the river.