SM Trastavere

Our Easter Sunday return to Trastavere was due not only to my scavenging ways but also to the fact that we thought--hoped--Vicki's missing hat had been left at the Dar Poeta restaurant the night before. And so we trudged from Porta Portese up to the restaurant again, the area no less crowded than the night before, and, voila! there was the hat sitting next to the manager's station. Thank you, honest Romans and tourists! 

Our walk had one other salutary effect: we passed by one of our favorite churches, SM Trastavere, and were able to go in and have a good look. The church dates from the 340s, just the foundation, and claims to be the oldest Marian church in Rome. There were major restorations and re-dos in the 5th, 8th, and 12th centuries; also the 18th, but who's counting? It's one of the frustrations but also one of the glories of these things, knowing that something is indeed very old, but that what you're looking at, parts of it, are not that old. The basilica design is Roman, the beautiful granite columns in SM Trastavere are possibly from the Baths of Caraculla or from a Temple of Isis (old), and the mosaics are Medieval (old enough). The Madonna della Clemenza is reckoned to be 6th-9th century, Byzantine (plenty old enough). A favorite place.

View from the piazza

Arch and half dome

King and Queen of Heaven

Deposition of Mary

Center aisle of the basilica and beautiful columns

Madonna della Clemenza

Ceiling...more pix of this church here