Rome - San Clemente

The lower church, a three-aisled pillared basilica of the fourth century, has frescoes dating from different centuries in the Romanesque period. Notable among them are a Ascension in the central aisle, in which the donor, Pope Leo IV, is shown with a square nimbus, indicating that he was still alive, episodes from the Passion, and scenes from the life of St Clement.

A passage leads underground to the excavated foundations of a second century Roman dwelling with the shrine of Mithras in a barrel-vaulted chamber. The altar, in the middle of the shrine, has a relief depicting Mithras (the Persian sun-god) killing a bull.

The upper church reflects the old basilican structure with its sequence of entrance porch, atrium with a fountain, the nave where the congregation worshipped and the area reserved for the clergy (the schola cantorum), with the high altar and the apse. Notable features of the interior are the ancient columns and the intarsia work by the Cosmati family in the marble pavement, the screens, the Easter candlestick, the tabernacle and the bishop's throne. The triumphal arch and apse are decorated with mosaics of Old and New Testament scenes, the most richly decorated in Rome, with the Tree of Life and the Cross, saints and symbolic devices, animals and plants combined in intricate patterns.

In the little St Catherine's Chapel at the west end of the north aisle are early Renaissance frescoes by Masolino (before 1431) depicting scenes from the life of St Catherine of Alexandria, of particular importance as showing the earliest use of perspective painting in Rome.