Basilica Papale di San Paolo fuori le Mura

At the end of a long, colonnaded approach along the Via Ostiense, Rome keeps the church of the other apostle. Rebuilt after a catastrophic fire to the exact footprint of the late-antique basilica, San Paolo fuori le Mura holds the tomb of Saint Paul beneath its altar and a gallery of papal portraits that has grown for fifteen centuries.

Why it matters

Constantine's architects placed the first church here over the apostle's burial place beside the road to Ostia, and pilgrims have never stopped coming. What makes the basilica unusual among Rome's great churches is its continuity: the medallion portraits of the popes, begun under Leo the Great in the fifth century, run in bands along the nave walls and are still being added, a sequence the basilica calls unique in the world. The building itself is a nineteenth-century reconstruction that deliberately reproduced the Theodosian church destroyed by fire in 1823, down to its dimensions, so the vast five-aisled interior reads like a fourth- and fifth-century basilica on an imperial scale — wide, luminous and sparingly ornamented compared with the Baroque churches of the centre.

What to notice

Stand at the entrance and take in the arcaded length of the nave, then walk the aisles to read the tondi of the popes, each a mosaic portrait with a name band, from the earliest survivors to the present reign. Under the main altar, the Confessio gives a view down to the tomb: a fourth-century marble plaque, over two metres long, inscribed PAULO APOSTOLO MART, was found roughly forty centimetres above the grave, and excavations in 2006 confirmed the sarcophagus below; since 2007 pilgrims may descend to the hypogeum. The Holy Door at the entrance is opened only for Jubilees.

Context and history

After the Edict of Milan of 313, Constantine built a modest funerary hall on the tomb, consecrated around 330 by Pope Sylvester. Within a generation the pilgrimage outgrew it: the emperors Theodosius, Valentinian II and Arcadius financed a far larger basilica, turning its axis westward toward the river, and Pope Siricius consecrated it in 390. Earthquakes in 442 and 1349, sacks by Lombards in 739 and Arabs in 847, and a five-century stretch behind fortifications all left their marks, but the great basilica stood intact until 1823, when it was destroyed in a single colossal fire. Leo XII appealed to the world for funds; the architect Luigi Poletti rebuilt on the same dimensions in a classical style, and Pope Pius IX inaugurated the new basilica on 10 December 1854. The last element, Antonio Maraini's bronze portal, was set in place only in 1931.