Rated Churches in Rome

One of the oldest and most beautiful of Rome's churches, San Clemente was built before 385 by early Christians, on the site of a house containing a shrine of Mithras – now far below street level. After this church was destroyed by the Normans in 1084, a new basilica was built over its ruins at the beginning of the 12th century.

Built on the site of the former temple of Minerva, which accounts for its name, Santa Maria sopra Minerva is the largest Gothic church in Rome (and one of the few in that style). Begun about 1280 and completed in 1453, its center-city location and service by the preaching order of Dominicans made it popular with the people of Rome, and as you can tell from the number of grave-slabs in the floor and on the walls, it has played an important role in the city's religious life.

One of the seven pilgrimage churches, the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem was built in the early fourth century to house the vast collection of holy relics brought to Rome from Jerusalem by St. Helena, mother of Constantine.

The 9th-century church was built over the home of a Roman girl who was martyred at age 14, and it is an interesting place to visit for several reasons. The exceptional 13th century fresco of The Last Judgement is by Pietro Cavallini, a precursor of Giotto, and the beautiful sculpture of St. Cecelia by Maderno was modeled on her incorrupt body exhumed in the 16th century.

Santa Maria in Trastevere (the densely populated neighborhood on the right bank of the Tiber) may be the first place in Rome where Christians were able to hold services in public. Building began about 221 and was completed in 340; it was rebuilt in the 12th century and redecorated in the Baroque period. The church has a Romanesque campanile, a facade decorated with mosaics, and a portico housing early Christian sarcophagi.

While the Pantheon is high on the list of the city's ancient Roman attractions and was built around AD 120 as a temple to honor Roman deities, today it is a Catholic church. It has been since the beginning of the 7th century, when it was converted by Pope Boniface IV and consecrated to St. Mary and the Martyrs.

Legend holds that this church beyond the Pincio Gardens was enlarged from a chapel built to drive away the evil spirit of Nero. As the church of the Augustinian canons, with a fine Renaissance facade, dome, and campanile, it was extended by Bramante in 1505, and later restored by Bernini.

Before the Popes established their residence in the Vatican after their return from exile in Avignon, the Basilica of St. John Lateran was the Papal residence. St. John Lateran has remained the episcopal church of the Pope, thus the inscription on the façade: "Mater et caput omnium ecclesiarum urbis et orbis" (Mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world).

One of Rome's four patriarchal basilicas and an important pilgrimage church, Santa Maria Maggiore has the distinction of being the only church in Rome to have celebrated mass every single day since the fifth century. The location of the basilica was determined by a vision of the fourth-century Pope Liberius, in which the Virgin directed him to build a church where the snow fell the following day. When snow did fall on the Esquiline hill the next morning, August 5, the Pope ordered the church built.

The most famous church in Christendom, St. Peter's is dedicated to the Apostle who is believed to have been the first Bishop of Rome, and as such the first Pope. The original church of St. Peter was dedicated in 326, built under the patronage of the Emperor Constantine. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V decided to build an entirely new church, which was not completed until the late 18th century.