The fifth-century mosaics
Rome's oldest narrative Christian mosaics, directly above the columns — look up between the arches; most visitors never do.
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St Peter's in the Vatican, Santa Maria Maggiore, St John Lateran (Rome's actual cathedral) and St Paul Outside the Walls. Visiting all four is an old pilgrim tradition; three are free and relatively close.
Forty minutes covers the interior and mosaics; add half an hour for the museum or the upper loggia to see the façade mosaics close up.
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One of Rome's four great papal basilicas, and the oldest church in the West dedicated to the Virgin Mary to survive in its original form since the fifth century. Its founding legend is among Rome's loveliest: snow fell in August 358 on the Esquiline Hill, tracing the church's outline — and to this day the miracle is marked each 5 August by white petals released from the ceiling. Inside is a lesson in historical layers: a colonnade of fifth-century Roman columns, above them original mosaics of the same age telling the Old Testament, a gilded wooden ceiling said to use the first gold brought from the Americas, and a twelfth-century Cosmatesque floor of interlocking geometry. Beneath the altar, a reliquary is said to hold fragments of the manger of Bethlehem. Entry is free like Rome's other great basilicas, and crowds are far lighter than at St Peter's. It sits close to Termini, the central station — an ideal stop on a first or last day.
Rome's oldest narrative Christian mosaics, directly above the columns — look up between the arches; most visitors never do.
Gold said to be the first brought to Europe from the Americas, gifted by Spain's monarchs to the pope — world history in a single ceiling.
On 5 August white petals fall from the ceiling to re-enact the founding legend — the loveliest annual rite in Rome's churches.
Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome