Basilica di San Nicola in Carcere

A first church stood here in the 6th century. A 10th-century inscription is cut on the column by the entrance, and the first reference to the church is a plaque of 1128 on the facade. The name comes from a prison on the site, the Byzantine Carcer ad Elephantum, which from the 13th century tradition confused with the Tullianum. The church was rebuilt in 1599, with a facade by Giacomo della Porta, keeping the medieval campanile, itself a converted Pierleoni tower. One of the bells is the one Pandolfo Savelli commissioned in 1289. The organ is by Nicola Morettini, 1908, with 9 stops. The basilica stands on its own because the medieval quarter around it was demolished in the mid-1920s.