Rome - St Lawrence outside the Walls

(Local Name: San Lorenzo fuori le Mura) This early Christian basilica, one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome, is dedicated to St Lawrence, who was martyred in A.D. 238 by being roasted on a gridiron. (The other pilgrimage churches are San Giovanni in Laterano, San Pietro in Vaticano, San Paolo fuori le Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Sebastiano and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.) The church was founded by Constantine the Great and thereafter frequently rebuilt and restored - most recently after suffering damage in an Allied air raid on Rome in July 1943. San Lorenzo, situated beside the Campo Verano, Rome's largest cemetery, has preserved through all rebuildings (particularly in the 13th century) the structure of an early Christian basilica, with its porch (containing ancient sarcophagi), its wide, high nave with narrow lateral aisles, its chancel on a higher level and its handsome columns. Lower down, on the level of the first basilica, is the tomb of Pope Pius IX (1846-78). Particularly fine is the Cosmatesque work (colored stones inlaid in marble) on the two marble ambos (pulpits for the reading of the Gospels and Epistles: the one on the epistle side, to the right, is the finest in Rome), the Easter candlestick, the floor, the tabernacle, the bishop's throne and the tomb of Cardinal Fieschi. The mosaics on the triumphal arch depict Christ surrounded by saints, with elaborate representations, to left and right, of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. There is a plain cloister dating from the late 12th century.