Santa Maria in Trastevere

Today Allison and I took a break from pelting cats with batteries. Ok, actually Allison took a break from the cats and I took a break from writing the Great American Novel. It's about human oddities in the circus.

Anyway, we had two appointments to see apartments today. One was in Trastevere near Piazza San Cosimato. It's a great location, but the apartment itself was sort of dirty. Anyone who's seen the places I've lived before knows that that's not necessarily a problem for me, but with marriage comes new responsibilities. They say that cleanliness is next to godliness. Whether or not that's true, I do know that cleanliness is next to not having to sleep on the couch.

After we saw that apartment, we stopped into Santa Maria in Trastevere, a very old church in the heart of that part of the city. We were in it a couple of weeks ago with my brother Ryan, and decided to stop in again. Here is a gray-skied photo I took of the facade.



And here's a little information on it from the Blue Guide.

The large basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere was constructed by Julius II (337-52), and was probably the first church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin. According to legend a hostel for veteran soldiers existed near the site, and some sort of Christian foundation is known to have existed here under St. Calixtus (pope, 217-22). The great basilica of Julius II was rebuilt by Innocent II in 1140, and slightly modified later. The church and its works of art were restored in 1983-6. The campanile [bell tower] is Romanesque.

The facade bears a 12C-13C mosaic of the Madonna surrounded by ten female figures with lamps (two of which are extinguished), of uncertain significance. The portico added by Carlo Fontana in 1702 (and recently restored) contains an interesting lapidary collection, including Roman and medieval fragments. The worn frescoes of the Annunciation date from the 15C. The three doorways incorporate Roman friezes.

There's also loads of interesting stuff on the inside, so if I get some pictures of that, I'll write (or copy, as the case may be) some more about that.

But for now, the circus calls.