 Introduzione
Santa Maria in Trastevere (the densely populated part of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber) is the oldest church to be consecrated to the Madonna in Rome. According to legend it stands on the spot where a spring of oil flowed 38 years before Christ's birth as an intimation of the future Savior. This may also be the place where Christians were able for the first time to hold services in public.
 History
The building of the church began between 221 and 227, in the reign of Pope Calixtus I, on the site of the Taberna meritoria, an asylum for retired soldiers and was completed in 340, in the reign of Julius I who rebuilt the titulus Calixti on a larger scale, and it became the titulus Iulii, one of the original twenty-five parishes in Rome. It underwent two restorations in the fifth and eighth centuries, and in 1140 it was re-erected under Innocent II as a thanksgiving offering for the submission of the anti-pope, Celestine II (1124). It was rebuilt in the 12th century.
The present nave of this Romanesque church, rebuilt by Pope Innocent II (1138-1148) and rededicated to the Virgin Mary, preserves its original basilica plan and stands on the earlier foundations. The 22 granite columns with Ionic and Corinthian capitals that separate the nave from the aisles came from the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, as did the lintel of the entrance door.
 Location
Address:Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, I-00186 Rome, Italy
Transit: Bus: 44, 75, 170, 181, 280, 710, 717, 718, 719, 774, 780.
 What's to see
The present edifice is dated 1300 and contains beautiful late 13th-century mosaics by Pietro Cavallini, on the subject of the Life of the Virgin (1291) There is a magnificent life-size icon, La Madonna della Clemenza, from as early as the 7th century in the apse. Domenichino's octagonal ceiling painting, Assumption of the Virgin (1617) fits in the coffered ceiling setting he designed.
The church has a Romanesque campanile, a facade decorated with mosaics (the Virgin with ten female saints) and a portico containing early Christian sarcophagi and various medieval fragments. Notable features of the interior are the Cosmatesque (marble intarsia) work in the floor, the coffered wooded ceiling, partly gilded by Domenichino (1617), the 22 massive Ionic columns in the nave, and a 15th century tabernacle by Mino del Reame (at the west end of the nave on the right). The mosaics at the exit of the church were supposed to remind worshippers of the glory of Heaven, portraying the saints against a celestial background of gold.
The church keeps a relic of Saint Apollonia, her head, as well as a portion of the Holy Sponge. Among those buried in the church, are the relics of Pope Callixtus I and the body of Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio.
 Useful information
Telephone: +39 6 581 4802
Open: 7:30 to 12:30 and 16:00 to 19:00
 Utili
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