Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano

Church · San Giovanni (Rione Monti / Esquilino edge)Rome,Italy

The cathedral of Rome, not St Peter's, raised by Constantine on the barracks of his defeated rival's guard and remodelled inside by Borromini.

The Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, and not St Peter's, is the cathedral of Rome: the inscription across the front calls it the mother and head of all the churches of the city and of the world. Colossal marble apostles lean out of deep niches down the nave, each holding the instrument he was killed with. The interior around them is the work of Borromini, ordered to modernise the basilica for the holy year of 1650 without destroying it. He wrapped the old columns inside white piers and opened the niches the statues later filled. Constantine handed the land to the bishop of Rome within a few years of taking the city in 312, and he handed it over pointedly. The ground held the barracks of the cavalry guard that had fought for his defeated rival, and he had them pulled down and the church raised on their foundations. It was the first great church built with imperial money, and its plan, a long hall with aisles, set the shape Christian building followed for centuries. Behind the church a thirteenth-century cloister keeps its twisted columns inlaid with gold and coloured glass, usually almost empty while the nave is full.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Three separate buildings share this square — the basilica, the round baptistery behind it, and the Scala Santa across the road, each with its own door, its own hours and its own rules.
See the baptistery before the basilica — it keeps shorter and less predictable hours than the church, with a long midday break, and it is the building visitors most often find closed.
Shoulders and knees are checked at this door — it is the pope's own cathedral and the rule is applied properly here, more strictly than at most churches in the centre.
Push through the middle bronze doors on your way in — they are the ancient doors of the Roman senate house, taken from the Forum and rehung here in the seventeenth century.

Things to do

1
Stand under the twelve apostles
Walk up the centre of the nave and stop between the niches. Each niche holds a marble apostle over four metres high, carved in the early eighteenth century, leaning out of its recess with its robes swept to one side. Look at the object each apostle holds, because it is usually the instrument he was killed with.
2
Find two matching columns in the cloister
The door is off the left aisle. Inside, small paired columns run round a garden: some straight, some twisted like rope, many sheathed in tiny gold and coloured glass squares. Sit on the low wall and look for two that match exactly — you will find almost none.
3
Cross the square to the baptistery
Behind the basilica stands a low octagonal building with a font sunk in the middle of it. This is the shape almost every later baptistery in Europe copied. The mosaics in the side chapels are fifth-century, and there are usually more pigeons in the courtyard outside than people indoors.