San Clemente

Today was not just spent at the Colosseum, instead I went with some friends to some churches very special to us. San Clemente was one of them. This was a church I spent several weeks researching for my professor, Carla Keyvanian. I had practically memorized the plan of the building, and new so much information about it. And so now, finally, I witnessed it in person.


The church really isn't spectacular from the outside, at least not for a Roman church. What makes San Clemente so fascinating is the layers of history it holds. There are five different parts of the building, reaching back as far as 200 or 300 years BCE. What's really cool is three of these layers are churches: a pagan temple from about 100 CE, an early Christian church from about 300, and a Christian basilica on top of that. Three different levels, three different churches. For a few euros you can take a tour down through the levels, but we didn't feel that we had time for that today. I'm going to leave you with a photo of the church's spolia: column capitals that were taken from wherever they could be found. In the middle ages, artisans no longer had the expertise to make new columns, so they would just reuse them from older buildings, leading a mix-match of styles.