Santi Giovanni e Paolo & the Roman Houses Beneath
Why is it significant?
Walk slowly up the Clivo di Scauro and notice the brick arches flying over your head from one side of the lane to the other. They are buttresses, propping up the side wall of the church on your left.
Key Facts
| Place | Santi Giovanni e Paolo & the Roman Houses Beneath |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo 13, 00184 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.88650, 12.49210 |
| Part of Walk | Rome in Layers: The Quiet Celian Hill, San Clemente & the Lateran |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk slowly up the Clivo di Scauro and notice the brick arches flying over your head from one side of the lane to the other. They are buttresses, propping up the side wall of the church on your left. And the cobbles under your feet follow the line of the Clivus Scauri, a street that has been climbing this hill for two thousand years.
The church at the top is dedicated to Saints John and Paul. Not the apostles... two Roman officials. According to their legend, they were executed in the 360s under Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, and buried secretly in their own house. Before the end of the fourth century, a senator called Pammachius built a church directly on top of that house.
For centuries this was a pious tradition. Then, in 1887, a Passionist priest called Father Germano started digging under the floor. He found the houses. Not one room but more than twenty, a whole block of Roman homes and shops, built between the second and fourth centuries. On the walls, painted young men hold garlands among birds and vines, cupids fish from little boats on a painted sea, and in one small shrine on the stairs, a later painting shows martyrs kneeling before execution. The Case Romane del Celio, as they are called, have been open to visitors since 2002, and the entrance is right here in the lane.
Now look up at the bell tower. It is twelfth-century Romanesque, decorated with glazed ceramic bowls, and it stands on enormous blocks of travertine. Those blocks belonged to the Temple of the Divine Claudius, the emperor deified after his death, whose huge platform covered much of this part of the hill.
Inside the church lies Saint Paul of the Cross, who founded the Passionist order and died here in 1775. His brothers still live in the monastery next door. Martyrs in the cellar, a temple under the tower, a saint in the chapel: three layers of Rome in one square. Now follow Via di San Paolo della Croce along the monastery wall, towards an old arch with an aqueduct running over its top.