Basilica papale di San Paolo fuori le Mura

Tradition gives the consecration as 18 November 324 under Silvester I, on a foundation by Constantine; the church was rebuilt from 391 under Theodosius, Arcadius and Valentinian II, and that building stood until the fire of 1823. Leo XII ordered the rebuilding in the encyclical Ad plurimas of 25 January 1825 and in a chirograph of 18 September 1825 requiring that «niuna innovazione dovra dunque introdursi nelle forme e proporzioni architettoniche». Pasquale Belli directed the work on a Valadier scheme and Luigi Poletti gave the church its present appearance; Gregory XVI dedicated the altar of the Confession on 5 October 1840 and Pius IX consecrated the whole basilica on 10 September 1854. It measures 131 by 65 metres and is 29.70 metres high, with five aisles and four rows of twenty monolithic Montorfano granite columns. The quadriportico was built between 1890 and 1928 by Giuseppe Sacconi and Guglielmo Calderini on Poletti's scheme, with a marble statue of St Paul by Giuseppe Obici and gates by Gino Benigni, competition 1913 and installed 1926; the earthquake of 30 October 2016 damaged it. The facade mosaics were made between 1854 and 1874 to cartoons by Filippo Agricola and Nicola Consoni. Antonio Maraini's central bronze door of 1931 measures 7.48 by 3.35 metres and Enrico Manfrini's Holy Door 3.71 by 1.82 metres. The right-hand door is the 11th-century bronze door of 54 panels. It was the main entrance until 1967 and since then has been the inner face of the Holy Door. Poletti's campanile was finished in 1860; six of its seven bells were cast in 1959 by the Marinelli foundry of Agnone and the highest dates from 1653. The great bell, 'Pierpaola', sounds G2, measures two metres across and weighs about 5,000 kg. Inside are 267 papal tondi with 25 medallions still empty, and 36 frescoes of the life of St Paul finished in 1860; more than 1,700 inscribed slabs have been recovered from the floor burials. The triumphal arch carries the mosaic given by Galla Placidia under Leo I; the apse mosaic was made under Honorius III between 1216 and 1227; Arnolfo di Cambio made the ciborium in 1285, and Pietro Vassalletto and Nicolo D'Angelo the paschal candelabrum in 1170. Of the four transept chapels, the Santissimo Sacramento by Carlo Maderno survived the 1823 fire, the San Lorenzo chapel holds Andrea Bregno's marble triptych of 1494, and the San Benedetto chapel uses twelve antique columns from Veii; the adjoining Sala del Martirologio keeps 12th and 13th-century fresco fragments. The great organ was built in 1857-58 by Enrico Priori from Serassi material, with 36 stops and 2,556 pipes; a second organ, probably by William George Trice in 1891, has 12 stops and 698 pipes. Two popes are buried here, Felix III and John XIII. Tsar Nicholas I gave the malachite for the transept altars, the Viceroy of Egypt the alabaster columns, and King Fuad I of Egypt the alabaster window slabs after the explosion at Forte Portuense in 1891 shattered the earlier glass. UNESCO's World Heritage property, inscribed in 1980, is titled Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura, and that title names this basilica.