Rome - Santa Prassede

A legend relates that two daughters of a Roman senator named Pudens, Pudentiana and Praxedes, were converted to the Christian faith by St Peter. The church, dedicated to St Praxades, has gone through a number of different building stages but has preserved the spatial character of an early Christian basilica, its high pillared nave rising into the presbytery with its triumphal arch and apse mosaics (ninth century, in the reign of Pope Paschal I). The mosaics are among the finest in Rome. On the triumphal arch is a representation of the heavenly Jerusalem; in the apse is the apocalyptic Lamb of the Revelation, and in the conch of the apse, above a frieze of lambs, SS. Peter and Paul leading Praxedes and Pudentiana, accompanied by Pope