San Crisogono

Listen for a moment before you go in. Trams rattle along Viale di Trastevere, scooters buzz past, and voices drift from the cafés nearby. Then you step through the doors, and the noise drops away almost at once. The air inside is cool and still. Light falls in soft bands across a long nave lined with grey stone columns. You are standing in one of the oldest Christian sites in Rome. Under your feet, there is another church entirely.

San Crisogono is dedicated to Saint Chrysogonus, an early Christian martyr. Tradition holds that he died in the persecutions under the emperor Diocletian, around the start of the fourth century. His death is linked to Aquileia, a Roman city near the top of the Adriatic, not to Rome itself. Very little about his life is certain. Much of his story comes from later legend rather than documents. His cult reached Rome early, though, and this church grew up around it.

The church began as one of the early tituli of Rome. A titulus was a community church, often founded in a private house, and recorded under the name of its owner or patron. These were the first parish churches of the city. This church appears among them in early lists. That makes it one of a small group of Roman churches whose roots go back to the age when Christianity first became legal. Trastevere, across the river from the old centre, was a crowded working district even then.

The building you see today is mostly the result of two later rebuildings. The first came in the twelfth century, when a new church was raised on a higher level, above the old one. The tall brick bell tower outside belongs to that medieval phase. It is Romanesque, which here means a plain style of the period, with stacked rows of small arched windows. Look for it on your way out. It rises above the rooftops of the quarter, and many visitors walk past without noticing it.

The second rebuilding came in the early seventeenth century, under Cardinal Scipione Borghese. He was a nephew of Pope Paul the Fifth, and one of the great art collectors of his day. He gave the church a new façade, a new ceiling, and a cleaner, brighter interior. His family's name appears across the front of the building. Inside, watch for his heraldry. The Borghese coat of arms includes an eagle and a dragon, and both creatures appear around the church.

Now look at the columns of the nave. They are ancient granite, taken from earlier Roman buildings and reused here. Romans did this often. Old temples and public halls were treated as quarries of fine stone. No two columns came from the same place in the same way, so look closely at the capitals on top. They do not all match. Then turn toward the altar. Two large columns of deep red porphyry support the great arch there. Porphyry is a hard purple stone from Egypt, once reserved for emperors.

Locals sometimes say these porphyry columns are among the largest in the city. Whatever their exact rank, they show how much value the builders placed on this church. Porphyry was very hard to cut and very hard to find. Reusing it here was a statement of prestige. Lower your eyes now to the floor. Much of it is Cosmatesque work. That is a medieval Roman style made by setting small cut pieces of marble and stone into circles, bands, and geometric patterns.

The Cosmati were families of Roman craftsmen, active in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They took fragments of coloured stone from ruins and arranged them into new designs. Walk slowly and follow the loops of the pattern. You will see red, green, white, and yellow stone set side by side. Some pieces have worn smooth after centuries of footsteps. It is easy to keep your eyes on the ceiling in a Roman church. Here, the floor deserves as much attention as anything above it.

Now look up at the coffered wooden ceiling. In the centre there is a painting of Saint Chrysogonus in glory. Here is a surprise many visitors miss. The painting you see is a copy. The original, by the Baroque painter Guercino, left the church long ago and is now in London. So the ceiling holds a faithful stand-in for a picture that travelled across Europe. The gilded frame and the carved coffers around it are still part of the Borghese work.

In the apse, behind the altar, there is a mosaic of the Virgin and Child. She sits between two saints, one of whom is Chrysogonus. Many scholars link the mosaic to Pietro Cavallini, a Roman artist of the late thirteenth century, or to his circle. Cavallini also worked at other churches in Trastevere. His figures have a calm weight and a softness that pointed toward later Italian painting. Notice how the gold background catches the light differently as you move.

The second surprise lies below. In the early twentieth century, excavations uncovered the remains of the earlier church beneath this one. Visitors can often reach them by a stairway, usually through the sacristy. Down there, the air is damp and cool. You will see old walls, the outline of the earlier building, and faded fragments of medieval frescoes. Some show saints and religious scenes. Their colours are pale now, but the shapes are still clear. Standing there, you are below the level of the medieval city.

The church is also connected to a more recent figure. Anna Maria Taigi, a Roman wife and mother who died in the nineteenth century, is honoured here. The Catholic Church declared her Blessed, a step toward sainthood. Her remains rest in a chapel inside the church. People from the neighbourhood still come to pray at her tomb. The church is cared for by the Trinitarians, a religious order founded in the Middle Ages to ransom captives.

Before you leave, stand for a moment near the back of the nave. Look down the long line of granite columns to the red porphyry and the gold of the apse. In one view, you can see ancient Rome, the medieval city, and the Baroque age together. Then step back out into the light and the noise of Trastevere. Find the brick bell tower above you. Below the street, the older church is still there.