The Basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls, an invaluable testimony to Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic art, is one of the four major basilicas in Rome, the second largest after St. Peter’s, with a papal altar and a Holy Door.
At the beginning of the fourth century, Emperor Constantine had excavations carried out on the sites of the “cella memoriae” where Christians worshipped the memory of the Apostle St. Paul of Tarsus, beheaded under Nero between 64 and 67 AD in “Aquae Salviae,” where the Abbey of the Three Fountains now stands. On this tomb, in the necropolis along the Via Ostiense, about 2 km from the Aurelian Walls on the left bank of the Tiber river, the emperor built a small basilica, consecrated by Pope Sylvester in 324.
It was restored and enlarged under the emperors Theodosius, Valentinian II and Arcadius, and again inaugurated in 395 by Emperor Honorius.
One thousand and three hundred years ago, the management of the basilica and the abbey was entrusted to Benedictine monks, who still reside there. For centuries it was a privileged destination for pilgrimages from abroad, particularly after the first Jubilee in 1300, which the great poet Dante Alighieri also attended.
Its current beauty is the result of the reconstruction, begun after the fire of 1823, which lasted a century and was concluded in 1931, the same year in which the monumental bronze central door by Antonio Marami was placed. To its right, the bronze door with silver figures made in Byzantium in 1070, represented the ancient central access, later repositioned to close the interior of the Holy Door. The basilica hall, divided into a central nave with four lateral aisles separated by four rows of 20 monolithic granite columns, has a Latin cross plan, with floors and side walls covered in polychrome marble with geometric motifs.
The chapel of relics preserves the chains with which the Apostle to the Gentiles was bound while in prison in Rome.
The Cosmatesque cloister was realized by Pietro Vassalletto and houses the lapidary collection, sarcophaguses and about 2000 fragments of funerary inscriptions. The decoration of the apse was carried out by Venetian mosaicists, while the mosaics of the façade and the frescoes of the internal walls are by Pietro Cavallini. On the tomb of St. Paul stands a precious Gothic baldachin by Arnolfo di Cambio and the candelabrum created to hold the Easter candle by Nicola d’Angelo and Pietro Vassalletto.
A peculiar feature of this basilica is the long series of medallions representing all the Popes in history, from St. Peter to Pope Francis, which was begun during the pontificate of Leo the Great in the fifth century.
A Carolingian Bible is preserved in the library of the Abbey. A large illuminated manuscript written on parchment in Rheims during the years 866-875 it was commissioned by Emperor Charles the Bald and used in the Middle Ages for oaths of loyalty to the Roman Pontiff.
The archaeological area along the right side of the Basilica, with architectural remains dating from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, has been open to visitors since the summer of 2013.