Basilica of Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura site features

Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura is reached through a courtyard off the Via Nomentana, and the first thing that happens is that you go down: a wide marble staircase of 1590 descends in a long straight flight towards the church door, because the basilica was built at the level of the cemetery it stands over, and the modern street has risen well above it.

The walls of that descent are a museum in themselves. Set into them are stone fragments and architectural pieces coming from the catacombs — inscribed slabs, broken cornices, carved panels, fixed flat into the plaster at eye height the whole way down.

The facade is modest and sits below you. A Renaissance portal carries the oak of the future Pope Julius II and is surmounted by a mullioned window.

Inside it is tall, narrow and old. Beyond the narthex, three naves run back, divided by fourteen ancient columns with Corinthian capitals in mismatched marbles; above the aisles run galleries, so the nave walls rise in two storeys of arcading and the room feels higher than it is wide.

Then the far end turns gold. In the half-dome of the apse a 7th-century mosaic covers the whole surface in gold tesserae, with three standing figures: Saint Agnes at the centre dressed as an Eastern empress, in heavy jewelled robes, with the popes Symmachus and Honorius I either side. There is no landscape and no architecture behind them — only gold, so the figures appear to float.

And a second, rounder building waits outside. Within the same complex stands the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, circular, its entrance preceded by a narthex with two apses at the sides that once joined it to the great cemeterial basilica.

The apse mosaic

7th century: Saint Agnes as an Eastern empress on a gold ground, flanked by the popes Symmachus and Honorius I — one of the highest examples of Byzantine art in Rome.

The staircase of 1590

A wide marble flight descending to the narthex, its walls set with stone fragments and architectural pieces from the catacombs.

The Renaissance portal

Bearing the oak of the future Pope Julius II, surmounted by a mullioned window.

The fourteen columns

Ancient, with Corinthian capitals, dividing the three naves.

The catacombs beneath

The basilica was built above the ruins of a cemetery and of the catacombs which held the remains of the Saint.

The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza

In the same complex, erected close against the great cemeterial basilica, its narthex with two apses acting as the link.

The cippus of Porta Pia

Just outside the complex: the cippus dedicated to the victims of the Breccia di Porta Pia.