Basilica di San Giovanni a Porta Latina

Right against the Aurelian Wall at the Latin Gate, San Giovanni a Porta Latina keeps one of Rome's great medieval surprises: a twelfth-century cycle of forty-six biblical scenes, painted before Cavallini and rediscovered in the twentieth century, inside a fifth-century foundation.

Why it matters

The Appia Antica archaeological park, which manages the site, traces the church to Pope Gelasius I at the end of the fifth century, a date supported by brick stamps from the age of Theodoric. Tradition fixes the memory of Saint John the Evangelist's attempted execution in boiling oil, under Nero, at this gate; the church stands as that memory's monument. The basilica preserves examples of Roman painting from before the age of Cavallini.

What to notice

A five-arched portico rests on columns taken from older buildings and opens onto a courtyard with a ninth-century well. An inscription of the baptismal formula around its rim is signed by its engraver, Stephanus. The Romanesque bell tower rises in five orders with mullioned windows on the upper floors. Two rows of five mismatched marble columns lead to the triple apses. Forty-six scenes from the Old and New Testaments cover the central nave's walls; they were painted under Pope Celestine III around the 1191 reconsecration, when the relics of Saints Gordian and Epimachus were transferred here. Faint traces on the portico and facade indicate that the exterior was once painted too.

Context and history

Brick stamps from the age of Theodoric support a fifth-century foundation and the attribution to Pope Gelasius I. Hadrian I rebuilt the church in 772; the restructuring of 1191 gave it the form and fresco cycle associated with the reconsecration under Celestine III. Work in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries altered the complex. In 1940 and 1941, the Rosminian Fathers restored its medieval character and built an adjoining missionary college. The fresco cycle was rediscovered in the early twentieth century. The small octagonal oratory of San Giovanni in Oleo, associated with the boiling-oil episode, stands nearby at the gate.