Basilica of San Clemente Site Features

The apse mosaic, Triumph of the Cross

Twelfth century, in the upper basilica, and a high point of Roman medieval mosaic. It is free to look at: it is in the church, not the excavations.

The Mithraeum

A temple of Mithras on the lowest level, its cult room about 9.6 metres by 6, discovered in 1867 and not properly investigated until 1914 because the site could not be drained. Mithraic temples are deliberately cave-like, and this one is beneath two churches, which is a juxtaposition no reconstruction could improve on.

The frescoes of the lower basilica

Dating from the eighth to the eleventh centuries — among the finest medieval frescoes anywhere. Four of the largest were paid for in the last third of the eleventh century by a lay couple, Beno de Rapiza and Maria Macellaria, and show the life, miracles and translation of St Clement.

The schola cantorum

The twelfth-century marble enclosure in the nave of the upper church, built using elements salvaged from the basilica now buried beneath it — the older building furnishing the newer one.

The Roman alley and the mint

A first-century street you can walk, between a large public building — probably the imperial mint, remodelled under the Flavians — and the Mithraeum opposite. The scale is domestic and the effect is not.

Clement XI's plaque of 1715,

In the atrium, praising the basilica: the moment the church's reputation was formally noticed, four years before it was given its present face.