San Giorgio in Velabro

Listen for a moment. The traffic on the riverside road fades into a low hum here, and the loudest sound may be your own footsteps on worn cobbles. In front of you stands a plain brick bell tower, a small columned porch, and a pale stone arch pressed against the church wall. This corner of Rome feels quiet and slightly sunken, as if the ground has settled over many centuries. In fact, it has.

You are standing in the Velabrum. In ancient times this was low, marshy ground between the Palatine Hill and the Tiber. Floodwater collected here, and the Romans drained it with their great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, which still runs beneath this neighbourhood. Legend has it that this marsh is where the basket carrying the twins Romulus and Remus came to rest, before a she-wolf found them. It is a founding myth, not recorded history. Still, Romans have connected this spot with the city's beginnings for a very long time.

Later the area became a place of trade. Just towards the river lay the Forum Boarium, the old cattle market. Merchants, butchers and moneychangers worked in these streets. That commercial past explains the carved arch you see attached to the church. It is the Arch of the Argentarii, which means the arch of the moneychangers. It was set up in the early third century by local bankers and cattle dealers, in honour of the emperor Septimius Severus and his family.

Look closely at the carved panels inside the arch, and you will find one of the most chilling details in Rome. The relief shows the imperial family making sacrifice. But one figure is missing. Severus had two sons, Caracalla and Geta. After their father died, Caracalla had his brother murdered and ordered his memory wiped out. Geta's image and name were chiselled away across the empire, and here too. The empty space on the stone is the trace of that crime.

Now turn to the church itself. A church has stood on this site since at least the early Middle Ages, probably from around the seventh century. At that time Rome had strong links with the Greek-speaking East, and Greek monks and officials lived in this district. They brought with them the cult of Saint George, the soldier saint famous for slaying the dragon. That is why a Roman church in a former cattle market carries an eastern saint's name.

In the eighth century, a pope brought an important relic here: the skull of Saint George himself, or so tradition holds. It was placed beneath the altar, and the church became a focus of devotion for the saint. For centuries afterwards, pilgrims came to this modest building to honour the dragon slayer. The relic is still kept here today, under the main altar at the far end of the nave.

Before you go inside, look again at the porch and the bell tower. Both were added in the Middle Ages, roughly in the twelfth or thirteenth century. The tower is Romanesque, a medieval style built with round arches and simple, solid forms. Notice the small arched openings stacked in layers, and the little discs of coloured stone set into the brick. These towers once rose above many Roman churches. This one is among the best kept.

Here is something most visitors walking past never learn. On a summer night in 1993, a car bomb exploded right in front of this church. It was one of a series of attacks by the Sicilian Mafia against the Italian state, and another bomb struck the Lateran basilica the same night. The blast destroyed most of this porch and damaged the front wall. Nobody was killed here, but the medieval portico lay in pieces.

What happened next is remarkable. Restorers gathered the fragments from the street, sorted them, and rebuilt the porch, using as much of the original stone as they could recover. When you look at the columns and the front wall, you are seeing a careful reconstruction. Some surfaces show joins and patches. They are honest scars. The church reopened a few years later, and people in the neighbourhood still remember that night.

Now step inside. The first thing you may feel is a gentle sense that something is not quite straight. You are right. The church is not a perfect rectangle. The walls narrow slightly towards the far end, and the rows of columns do not run exactly parallel. The columns themselves do not match. They differ in height, in thickness, and in the stone they are cut from. Most were taken from older Roman buildings and reused here, a common practice in medieval Rome.

The interior is bare and calm. That is partly deliberate. In the 1920s, restorers removed many later decorations that had been added over the centuries, and they tried to return the church to its early medieval look. The result is brick, stone, timber and soft light. Let your eyes travel down the nave to the rounded apse at the far end, where the main painting waits.

The fresco in the apse dates from around the end of the thirteenth century. It is often attributed to Pietro Cavallini or his workshop. Cavallini was a Roman painter who worked before Giotto and helped move painting towards more natural, solid figures. In the centre stands Christ, with the Virgin Mary and Saint Peter beside him. To one side you will see Saint George with his horse and banner. On the other side stands Saint Sebastian, the second patron of this church.

One more surprise. In the nineteenth century, this church was given as a titular church to John Henry Newman, the English theologian who became a cardinal. Every cardinal in Rome is linked to a particular church, and this small building in the old marsh was his. As you leave, pause under the porch. Feel the cool air from the stone, look up at the tower, and glance once more at the empty space where Geta's face should be. Then walk slowly out into the light of the Velabrum.