Rome: Before the Renaissance

Morning flight from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino then private coach we reach our four-star hotel located in the heart of Rome (flight tour only). After some time to settle into our rooms, we leave the hotel on foot and walk across the Tiber to see two gems of medieval art. In Santa Cecilia, hidden for many years, are the remains of a fresco cycle by Pietro Cavallini. Cavallini is also represented at Santa Maria in Trastevere, but the main attractions here are an early icon of the virgin and child and the spectacular 12th-century mosaic in the apse. We return to the hotel on foot before heading out again for a group dinner.

The morning takes us to the heart of ancient Rome, but we start with a monument to the first Christian emperor, Constantine, whose arch inspired countless imitations. Apart from an overview of the ancient monuments, the morning concludes with the church of Santa Maria Antiqua. Buried in the 9th century, the church contains a compendium of early Christian painting from before that date. The Case Romane are among Rome’s most beguiling sights: a warren of excavated spaces, revealing changes in living patterns, artistic taste and religious belief. We follow this with a visit to Santo Stefano a 5th-century church built to an unusual, and circular, plan.

We begin the day at the Pantheon, the finest building to have survived from antiquity and astonishing not only for its space, but also for the surviving wall decoration. It has been a church since the 7th century, dedicated to the Virgin. We then visit one of Rome’s few gothic churches, the richly painted Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. The afternoon visits take us to the Baths of Diocletian, the bestpreserved of the Imperial baths, partly due to their conversion into a church. The Museum in the Palazzo Massimo houses some of the greatest treasures of ancient art, the wall-paintings of the villa of Livia, the Boxer, and a fascinating collection of sarcophagi.

San Clemente provides an ideal vision of the development of religion in Rome: at the very bottom, a temple of Mithras, at the top an ornate Baroque ceiling, but the real jewels (perhaps) are found in the frescoes – of the eleventh and fifteenth centuries – and the apse mosaic of the twelfth. The nearby church of SS. Quattro Coronati is a much-remodelled structure and preserves in the chapel of St Sylvester paintings reflecting the Pope’s struggles with secular power from the 13th century. The afternoon takes us to the quiet of the Aventine Hill, and the best-preserved early Christian church, Santa Sabina with its carved wooden doors.

The morning is taken up with three of the most interesting of Rome’s churches: Santa Pudenziana which retains its late-antique apse mosaic showing Christ among the apostles, Santa Maria Maggiore, the first great Roman church dedicated to the Virgin containing very early (and some later) mosaics and Santa Prassede a fine example of how the early Middle Ages sought to recapture the glories of early medieval art.

We spend the day outside the centre of Rome, visiting the tombs of the great (and not so great). Catacombs always intrigue, and the catacombs of Domitilla have some of the finest early Christian funerary art. We visit the Circus of Maxentius (with the mausoleum which housed his son), and, after lunch on the Appian way, we travel by coach to visit the church of Sant’Agnese, and the mausoleum of Costanza, Constantine’s daughter, with its intriguing mix of Christian and pagan mosaics.

We conclude our tour visiting the Lateran, Rome’s first Cathedral, with the 4th- and 5th-century Baptistery, and an enchanting medieval cloister. After an independent lunch, we travel by coach to Rome Fiumicino airport for a mid-afternoon flight to London Heathrow (flight tour only).