Discover Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere

Santa Maria in Trastevere is a titular church and minor basilica in Trastevere, Rome. It is traditionally considered one of the oldest churches in the city dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and has served as a cardinal titular church since the third century.

The present basilica was largely rebuilt under Pope Innocent II in the twelfth century and is known for its medieval mosaics, its Baroque interior and the Madonna della Clemenza. It remains an active parish and a traditional site of pilgrimage, especially during Marian feasts such as the Assumption on 15 August.

The inscription on the episcopal throne states that this is the first church in Rome dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus — although some give that distinction to Santa Maria Maggiore. It is certainly among the oldest.

The building sits on its own piazza, with an octagonal fountain that already appears on a map of 1472. Entry is free.

Santa Maria in Trastevere is a titular church and minor basilica in Trastevere, Rome. It is traditionally considered one of the oldest churches in the city dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and has served as a cardinal titular church since the third century.

The present basilica was largely rebuilt under Pope Innocent II in the twelfth century and is known for its medieval mosaics, its Baroque interior and the Madonna della Clemenza. It remains an active parish and a traditional site of pilgrimage, especially during Marian feasts such as the Assumption on 15 August.

The inscription on the episcopal throne states that this is the first church in Rome dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus — although some give that distinction to Santa Maria Maggiore. It is certainly among the oldest.

The building sits on its own piazza, with an octagonal fountain that already appears on a map of 1472. Entry is free.

A twelfth-century basilica on a fourth-century plan, built out of second-century Rome. The nave preserves its pre-twelfth-century basilica layout and stands on the earlier foundations. The 22 granite columns with Ionic and Corinthian capitals that separate the nave from the aisles came from the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla — and so did the lintel of the entrance door.

The capitals carry a scar worth looking for. When nineteenth-century scholarship identified faces in their carved decoration as Isis, Serapis and Harpocrates, a restoration under Pius IX in 1870 hammered the offending faces off. What remains is a record of two different centuries deciding what a church may contain.

The campanile is Romanesque and twelfth-century. Near the top, a niche protects a thirteenth-century mosaic of the Madonna and Child by Pietro Cavallini: the Madonna enthroned and suckling the Child, flanked by ten women holding lamps. A nursing Virgin on a church front is an early instance of a type that became common in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance — the motif itself is far older, with significant seventh-century Coptic examples at Wadi Natrun in Egypt.

The façade is eighteenth-century. Carlo Fontana restored it in 1702, replacing the ancient porch and its sloping tiled roof with the present classicizing one and surmounting the whole with a balustrade carrying statues of four popes. The octagonal fountain in the piazza, already on a map of 1472, was restored by him too.

And one chapel is a small masterpiece of Baroque invention. The fifth chapel on the left, the Avila Chapel by Antonio Gherardi, is dark in its lower order and Borromini-like in its forms; in the dome an oculus opens and four putti emerge to carry a central tempietto, framing a light-filled chamber above lit by windows you cannot see from below.

It began as a tavern, and it took an emperor's ruling to make it a church. Pope Callixtus I founded a house-church here about 220, on the site of the Taberna meritoria, a refuge for retired soldiers. The area was made available for Christian use by the emperor Alexander Severus, who settled a dispute between the Christians and the tavern-keepers with the words the Liber Pontificalis records: "I prefer that it should belong to those who honor God, whatever be their form of worship."

The site has a name older than the building. It was known as the Titulus Callisti, after a legend in the Liber Pontificalis ascribing the earliest church here to Callixtus I, who died in 222 and whose remains — moved into the new structure — are preserved under the altar. The predecessor of the present church was probably built in the early fourth century, itself the successor to one of the tituli, the early Christian basilicas named for a patron.

Then it was enlarged, repaired, and finally rebuilt. Pope Julius I rebuilt it on a larger scale in 340. Two restorations followed in the fifth and eighth centuries. In 1140–1143 it was re-erected on its old foundations under Pope Innocent II — which is the building you enter.

It was built out of older Rome, literally. The 22 granite columns of the nave and the lintel over the door were taken from the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. A twelfth-century pope rebuilding a fourth-century church used third-century imperial masonry to do it, and made no attempt to hide the fact.

Is there an admission charge? No. It is free, and there is no security check.

What are the opening hours? No authority publishes them. The basilica's own website returns a server error on every page, and Turismo Roma's entry says to contact the basilica directly for mass times and visiting arrangements. Telephone 06 5814802.

Why won't you just print the hours other sites list? Because none of those sites has any standing to state them, and a reader turned away from a locked door at a time we published would have been misled by us.

Is this the oldest church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin? The inscription on its episcopal throne says it is the first. Santa Maria Maggiore is also claimed. It is certainly one of the oldest churches in the city.

How old is the present building? It was re-erected on its old foundations in 1140–1143 under Pope Innocent II, on a site in Christian use since about 220.

Where did the columns come from? The ruins of the Baths of Caracalla — 22 granite columns, and the lintel of the entrance door.

Why are the faces on the capitals damaged? Nineteenth-century scholars identified them as Isis, Serapis and Harpocrates, and a restoration under Pius IX hammered them off in 1870.

What is the Madonna della Clemenza? An encaustic panel of the enthroned Virgin and Child in the Cappella Altemps, dated between the sixth and ninth centuries and probably Byzantine — one of the five oldest surviving Marian icons of the medieval period.

Can I see anything if it is closed? Yes. Cavallini's thirteenth-century Madonna on the campanile, Carlo Fontana's 1702 façade and the octagonal fountain are all in the open piazza.