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A little ways southeast of Piazza Venezia is a minor basilica that contains two items of extreme interest.  One of these is the chains used to restrain St. Peter in prison in Jerusalem along with the chains used to hold him in Rome. Eudoxia, the wife of the Roman emperor Valentinian III made a gift of the Jerusalem chains to Pope Leo I.  The Pope was already in possession of the Roman chains.  It is said that when Leo held the two chains up side by side, they sprang together and fused themselves together.  In 1440 AD, the church was built to house these chains and was dedicated to that purpose by Pope Sixtus III.

 

 

Another noteworthy item is the sculpture Moses by Michelangelo.  Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to produce 44 pieces of statuary of this scope to furnish the tomb that Julius had planned for himself in St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican.  Only the one work was done though and it eventually wound up in San Pietro in Vincoli.  Julius was buried in the Vatican.  His body was dug up and desecrated by the Protestant armies which invaded Rome in 1527.  What remained of his remains were re-interred there.

 

 

The neighborhood where the church is located is not the most auspicious in Rome

 

 

 

The church itself doesn't look like much from the outside either.

 

 

 

The nave of the small church.

 

 

 

The inside lintel of the main doorway.

 

 

 

The right aisle of the church.

 

 

 

The apse with the altar, baldacchino, and the confessio.

 

 

 

The painting in the center of the nave ceiling is entitled "The Miracle of the Chains."

 

 

 

The confessio (the sunken area in front of the altar) contains the reliquary.

 

 

 

The confessio.

 

 

 

The chains of St. Peter.

 

 

 

The small organ in the small church.

 

 

 

Moses with Leah (l.) and Rachel.  The figure of Moses is slightly under 8 feet from feet to top of head.

 

 

 

The upper portion of the Moses work.  Taking stitched photographic shots is made difficult by Church prohibition on tripods in all of Rome's churches and basilicas.

 

 

 

A beautiful mosaic of St. Sebastian from the 7th Century AD.  It was presented to Rome by the Byzantine church to ward off a plague at that time.

 

 

 

An interesting painting that I have not yet been able to identify.

 

 

 

The tomb of Cardinal Cinzio Passeri Aldobrandini decorated with imagery of the Grim Reaper.

 

 

 

Inscription over the portal to the apse.

 

 

 

Back in the parking lot, this taxi driver turned me down because he thought my destination wasn't far enough away to make it worth his time.

 

 

 

So off down the alleyway we go.....for what seemed to me to be a very long hike.

 

 

 

 

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