Basilica di Santa Balbina all'Aventino

A hall church: a single space without aisles, with alternating rectangular and semicircular side chapels set between piers, some of them frescoed. it.wikipedia's article on the church records ancient Roman mosaics from the via dei Fori Imperiali excavations laid in the floor in the 1930s, a Cosmatesque episcopal cathedra in the apse, and apse frescoes, a Gloria di Cristo with Ss Felicissimus, Balbina, Quirinus and a holy pontiff, with St Peter and St Paul on the triumphal arch, painted by Anastasio Fontebuoni in 1600 for Cardinal Pompeo Arrigoni, titular from 1597. The present façade is a sixteenth-century remaking. The postal address is Via di Santa Balbina 8; the modern main approach is from Viale Guido Baccelli, up the Scalea Padre Simpliciano della Natività. It is not a parish. It is a place of worship and a filial church of the Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano. No source states its opening hours, so none are given here.

History

The masonry, opera listata and brick, suggests the fourth century, but the building may have begun as part of a rich domus, identified from brick stamps as the house Septimius Severus gave to Lucius Fabius Cilo, twice consul and Prefect of Rome, at the start of the third century. The first attestation of the titulus is the synod of 595. it.wikipedia records the church as a minor basilica, which is an ecclesiastical rank. The adjoining fortified convent is dedicated to St Margaret of Cortona and is run as a hospice by the Suore Francescane dei Sacri Cuori, founded by Padre Simpliciano della Natività, for whom the stair up from Viale Guido Baccelli is named. It houses elderly and socially vulnerable residents.

History

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