Rome
In Rome itself, numerous buildings including pagan temples and other sites were converted into churches, and several major archeological sites owe their preservation to this. On the Roman Forum alone, the Curia Iulia or Roman Senate building (Sant'Adriano in Foro), the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (San Lorenzo in Miranda), and the Temple of Romulus (Santi Cosma e Damiano) were transformed into churches, and the churches of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami and San Pietro in Carcere were built above the Mamertine Prison nearby, where Sts. Peter and Paul were reputed to have been held. The previously mentioned Pantheon and Baths of Diocletian were also converted into churches.
One of the most richly adorned churches, the Basilica di San Clemente, was, according to Christian tradition, built on top of Titus Flavius Clemens's private home, as he had allowed early Christians to worship in his home, due to having pro-Jewish sympathies. An early 2nd century Mithraeum stands across the Roman street from the house and can be visited by visitors. Other Mithraea have been excavated under churches, such as Santa Prisca, and Santo Stefano Rotondo.
Several churches, especially in Rome, are said to have been built on the sites of the earlier burial places of martyrs in the catacombs of Rome or elsewhere. The sanctification of burial places, and placing tombs inside churches, was a novelty of Christianity, and a break with pagan tradition, where burials were regarded as unclean, and usually only allowed beyond a set distance from a city's walls.
Read more about this topic: Christianised Sites
Famous quotes containing the word rome:
“History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts: it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called eternal. What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (18991973)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)