The apostle statues
Twelve figures four and a half metres tall in the nave niches, each in a different dramatic pose — a complete Baroque performance.
NikonZ7II — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Livioandronico2013 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Livioandronico2013 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Livioandronico2013 — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because a cathedral is by definition the bishop's church, and Rome's bishop is the pope — whose official seat has been here since the fourth century. St Peter's is larger and more famous, but it is not the city's cathedral.
Yes with three days or more: free, near-empty, and four sights in one place (basilica, baptistery, cloister, Holy Stairs). The metro brings you from the Colosseum in ten minutes.
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A surprise most visitors miss: Rome's actual cathedral is not St Peter's but this — "mother of all churches of the city and the world," as its façade inscription declares. This has been the seat of the Bishop of Rome (that is, the pope) since the fourth century, and popes lived here for a thousand years before moving to the Vatican. Inside is grand Baroque, redesigned by Borromini in the seventeenth century: a nave of massive piers holding twelve apostle statues four and a half metres tall, each in its own niche and its own theatrical pose. A gilded wooden ceiling and Cosmatesque floor complete the effect. Outside are three more stops, free or nearly so: the octagonal fourth-century baptistery (the oldest in the West and the template for all that followed), the double cloister with its twisted mosaic-inlaid columns, and the Holy Stairs in the building opposite — twenty-eight marble steps the faithful climb on their knees. Relatively far from the centre, but the metro stops at its door.
Twelve figures four and a half metres tall in the nave niches, each in a different dramatic pose — a complete Baroque performance.
A fourth-century octagon that became the template for every baptistery in Europe after it — and free.
Twisted columns inlaid with gold mosaic around a silent courtyard — Rome's loveliest monastic cloister and its least crowded.
Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome