Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere preserves the saint's story in a ninth-century apse mosaic, Stefano Maderno's marble figure of her body as found in 1599, and Pietro Cavallini's Last Judgment above the nuns' choir. Excavations beneath the basilica reach back to a Roman house that predates the church.

Why it matters

Christian tradition holds that Cecilia, a noblewoman martyred around 230 after converting her husband Valerian and his brother Tiburtius, suffered in the steam of her bathhouse and was buried by Pope Urban I, who consecrated her house. The church was a titulus by the fifth century and was rebuilt as a basilica in the ninth century by Paschal I, whose discovery of the grave is associated with a vision in devotional tradition. Benedictine nuns have inhabited the monastery since its refoundation in 1527.

What to notice

The apse mosaic from the age of Paschal I shows Christ with Saints Paul, Cecilia, Peter, Valerian and Agatha; the pope presents a model of his church. Beneath the high altar, Maderno's 1599 statue depicts Cecilia as her body was reported when Cardinal Sfondrati opened the tomb. Above the nuns' choir, Cavallini's late-thirteenth-century Last Judgment was rediscovered in 1900. In the sanctuary is the black-and-white marble ciborium signed by Arnolfo di Cambio and dated 1293; Sebastiano Conca's 1727 vault fresco depicts the Apotheosis of Saint Cecilia. Excavations expose a late-second-century-BC domus, an early-second-century-AD insula and a crypt associated with Cecilia and other martyrs and popes.

Context and history

Cecilia’s martyrdom account belongs to devotional legend. Tradition connects Paschal I’s discovery of the grave with a vision; the ninth-century pope translated the relics and rebuilt the titulus as a three-aisled basilica. The monastery first housed the Humiliati and was refounded for Benedictine nuns in 1527. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries added the cloister, atrium and bell tower. After the tomb was opened in 1599 and Maderno made his sculpture, later restorations included Ferdinando Fuga's eighteenth-century entrance, assembled with ancient pink-granite and African-marble columns. A large Roman cantharus stands in the courtyard.