Basilica di Santa Sabina all'Aventino

Founded in 425 by Peter, a priest of Illyria, on an earlier Titulus Sabinae, and restored by Leo III and then Eugene II, who added the schola cantorum. In the tenth century its command of the river made it a fortified residence, of the Crescenzi and then the Savelli. In 1219 Honorius III gave the church and part of the palace to St Dominic, founder of the Dominicans, who lived and worked here; the campanile and cloister date from then. Domenico Fontana transformed it for Sixtus V in 1587, and in the early twentieth century Antonio Munoz stripped the Baroque additions and returned it to its medieval appearance. Of the original fifth-century decoration only a great mosaic band survives, with an inscription in gold letters on blue naming Peter of Illyria and Pope Celestine I. To the right of the wooden door a small column marks where St Dominic is said to have prayed at night, topped by a black basalt stone, probably a Roman weight.