These catacombs are found on land once belonging to Flavia Domitilla, wife of a first-century consul, banished to the island of Ponza for her faith. The guided visit starts...

This two-storey second-century AD burial place contains bas-reliefs and frescoes, including what is believed to be the first-ever depiction of Mary.

These are Rome's largest catacombs. Buried in the 29km (18 miles) of tunnels were nine popes (venerated in a chapel known as il piccolo Vaticano), dozens of martyrs and...

The name 'catacomb' originated in this spot, where a complex of underground burial sites situated near a tufa quarry was described as being kata kymbas - 'near the quarry'. The...

Filippo Neri (1515-95) was a wealthy Florentine who abandoned the cut and thrust of the business world to live and work among the poor in Rome. He experienced an 'ecstasy' of...

To the left of the 15th-century church of San Giovanni dei Genovesi is a wooden door (ring the bell marked 'Sposito' to get in) that opens into a glorious flower-filled...

This heavenly oasis of calm in the midst of a ruckus of traffic has been the resting place for foreigners who have passed on to a better world since 1784. Verdant and...

Along via Casilina, just inside the GRA ring road, is the anonymously ugly suburb of Tor Tre Teste, above which emerges the startling Dio Padre Misericordioso church, designed...

The huge Gesù is the flagship church of the Jesuits, the order founded by Basque soldier Ignatius Loyola in the 1530s. Realising the power of a direct appeal to the emotions,...

This colossal cylinder of travertine is the final resting place of, and unusual tribute to, a woman who linked two major families in late first century BC Rome. A large plaque...

A hostel and church was established around 726 by King Ine of Wessex to cater for weary and sick pilgrims who descended from the north. Known as the burgus saxonum or in...

A favourite with kids for its dungeon-like underground level, this 12th-century basilica is a three-dimensional Roman time-line, a church above a church above an even older...

Rebuilt in the 1680s, this church took the place of a 13th-century one that held now-lost frescoes by Pietro Cavallino chronicling the life of St Francis of Assisi. The saint...

The soft light from the windows in the clerestory give a wonderfully peaceful aura to this austere little church of the fifth century. A swingeing restoration in 1925 did away...