Santa Costanza

What is there today

The mausoleum. It is a circular building of brick-faced concrete: a high central space under a shallow dome raised on a drum, lit by twelve windows and carried on twelve pairs of granite columns with composite capitals, ringed by a darker, barrel-vaulted ambulatory (en.wikipedia; the capitals are reused, it.wikipedia). The ambulatory vault is the reason to come. Its mosaics are contemporary with the building and secular in feel: vine scrolls, geometric patterns, birds, vessels and branches, and a panel of cupids harvesting grapes and making wine, the scenes that led Renaissance visitors to take the place for a temple of Bacchus (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). They rank among the oldest monumental Christian mosaics surviving in Rome (Turismo Roma). Two small apses in the ambulatory wall hold mosaics of Christ handing a scroll to Saint Peter, one inscribed DOMINUS PACEM DAT, “the Lord gives peace”; both have been much restored, and whether they belong to the 5th or the 7th century is long debated (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). The dome’s own mosaics are gone, destroyed around 1620 and known from watercolour copies made in 1538–1540 (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). The great porphyry sarcophagus is in the Vatican Museums; a cast copy stands in the ambulatory (en.wikipedia).

The Constantinian basilica. Beside the mausoleum lie the ruins of the very large funerary basilica built under Constantine from 338, to which the mausoleum was joined (en.wikipedia). The lower walls of part of it and its apse still stand (en.wikipedia). Its archaeological area is entered only on the parish’s private guided tour (the operator).

Sant’Agnese fuori le mura. A short walk away, the present church of Saint Agnes was built by Pope Honorius I in the 7th century, over what was held to be her grave (Pleiades; en.wikipedia). It keeps much of its original structure, and its apse mosaic, less restored than most of its date, shows Agnes in the dress of a Byzantine empress between Honorius, who offers a model of the church, and a second pope whose identity is uncertain. A long staircase lined with inscriptions from the catacombs and other ancient buildings leads down from the street to the church floor (en.wikipedia), and the marble plaque carved with Pope Damasus’s 4th-century poem on Agnes is set in its narthex (en.wikipedia, Catacombs of Saint Agnes).

The catacombs of Saint Agnes. Agnes was buried in this underground cemetery under the church. It runs on three levels and has no significant paintings, but it is rich in inscriptions; the oldest dated one, the epitaph of a man named Sisinnius, is from 314 (en.wikipedia). Visits are by guided tour only (the operator).

Catacomba Maggiore. Also on the Via Nomentana, with its entrance on Via Asmara, the Coemeterium Maius began around the middle of the 3rd century as two separate burial grounds whose union made it the largest catacomb in Rome; one of its galleries, nearly 200 m long, is among the longest underground in the city, and a crypt keeps remains of frescoes, the oldest from the first half of the 4th century (it.wikipedia). No public visiting hours are published for it.

Two tombs by the road. About 300 m along the Via Nomentana stands the so-called Mausoleum of Tor di Quinto. It was built at Tor di Quinto, by the ancient Via Flaminia, as twin marble-faced drums on a high podium; its marble facing, partly recovered in excavations in the 1870s, was later reassembled here by the archaeologist Giacomo Boni, who rebuilt one drum with a new red-brick base and core, decorated with the original garland frieze. It dates from the 1st or 2nd century AD (Sovrintendenza Capitolina). About 900 m to the north-east, in Piazza Elio Callistio, the “Devil’s Chair” is a two-storey temple-tomb from the first half of the 2nd century. Its front has collapsed and three sides survive, which give it the look of a huge chair with armrests; the attribution to Aelius Callistion, a freedman of Hadrian, is disputed (Sovrintendenza Capitolina). Both can be seen only from outside (Sovrintendenza Capitolina).