Santa Sabina

Santa Sabina Review

This Early Christian basilica demonstrates the severe—but lovely—simplicity common to churches of its era. Although some of the side chapels were added in the 16th and 17th centuries, the essential form is as Rome's Christians knew it in the 5th century. Once bright with mosaics, today the church only has one: that above the entrance door (its gold letters announce how the church was founded by Peter of Illyria, "rich for the poor," under Pope Celestine I). Meanwhile, the mosaics in the apse have been at least partially reproduced in Taddeo Zuccari's Renaissance fresco of Christ and his apostles. The beautifully carved, 5th-century cedar doors to the left of the outside entrance are the oldest of their kind in existence.