Santa Sabina

Santa Sabina Review

This Early Christian basilica demonstrates the severe 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 the church was bright with mosaics but the only one that remains is above the entrance door (its gold letters announcing how the church was founded by one 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 and 5th century cedar-wooden doors to the left of the outside entrance are the oldest of their kind in existence.