Santa Maria in Trastevere

This stunning church, with its welcoming portico and façade with shimmering 13th-century mosaics, overlooks the traffic-free piazza of the same name. Santa Maria is the heart and soul of Trastevere. According to legend, a well of oil sprang miraculously from the ground where the church now stands the moment Christ was born, and flowed to the Tiber all day. A small street leading out of the piazza, via della Fonte dell’Olio, commemorates this. The façade we see today was designed by Carlo Fontana in 1692, but the mosaics pre-date it by four centuries: they show Mary breastfeeding Christ on a solid gold background.