Rome - Santi Giovanni e Paolo

According to legend a church was built on this site in the fifth century by a Roman senator names Byzantius and his son Pammachius in honor of the martyrs John and Paul, officers in the Roman army who were executed in the time of Julian the Apostate. The church is said to have been built over the remains of the house on the Caelian hill in which they were killed. Around 1150 it was rebuilt by Cardinal Giovanni di Sutri, with the addition of the porch, the campanile and the dwarf gallery in the apse. During the Baroque period the interior was redecorated. Excavations in the present century have revealed the Roman house under the church, so it is now possible to follow the history of the site in an unbroken line from the original Roman house with its fine brick masonry and lively frescoes (the best preserved wall paintings in Rome, depicting Venus and a male divinity), the antique columns and the two lions in the porch, by way of the medieval building, with its marble columns and the campanile built over the walls of the large temple of Claudius on the Caelian, to the basilica we see today.