Rome - Santa Maria in Cosmedin

On the south side of the Piazza Bocca della Verità, overlooking the Tempio di Fortuna Virile, the Arco di Giano and the church of San Giorgio in Velabro, is the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (probably given this name by Byzantines after a square in their city). This is one of the finest examples of medieval church architecture in Rome. Begun in 772, during the reign of Pope Adrian I, and completed in its present form in about 1124 under Calixtus II, it is an architectural gem (suggesting an alternative derivation of the name Cosmedin from the Greek cosmos, which means "perfect order" or "ornament"). The noble harmony of the church's proportions begins with the seven-story campanile and is continued in the wide two-story porch with its projecting canopy; it reaches even sublimer heights in the interior, with its tall nave and carefully structured layout to meet liturgical needs, and is infinitely repeated in the intarsia (inlaid marble) work by the Cosmati. The alternation of columns and piers, the irregular dimensions, the three apses, the aisles with their famous frescoes, the Cosmatesque work in the floor and the marble screens of the scola cantorum (the area reserved for the clergy), the marble ambos (reading pulpits), the bishop's throne with its two lions' heads and the ornamental disc behind it, the twisted Easter candlestick, the ciborium over the altar; all these details combine to make Santa Maria in Cosmedin one of the most beautiful of the smaller churches of Rome. In the crypt are early Christian tombs and the foundations of a pagan temple.