Chiesa di Santa Maria Liberatrice
Historic site · Testaccio, Italy
The parish church on piazza di Santa Maria Liberatrice, built between 1906 and 1908 to a design by the architect Mario Ceradini in a neo-Romanesque and neo-Byzantine manner. Inside, three aisles stand on columns whose capitals carry the symbols of the evangelists; the central band of the floor is a black-and-white mosaic with polychrome marble fragments, geometric motifs and the signs of the zodiac in panels. Between 1956 and 1964 Luciano Bartoli painted the apse fresco, of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the works of mercy below, and made the stained glass of the façade and the aisles.
History
Pius X entrusted the building first to the Benedictines and then definitively to the Salesians, who were already working in the quarter; the first parish priest was Luigi Maria Olivares, later bishop of Sutri and Nepi. In the same years the mayor Ernesto Nathan gave Domenico Orano the work of cultural and social provision in the rione. The pope transferred here the titulus of the demolished church of Santa Maria Liberatrice al Foro Romano, together with its venerated image, the fresco Sancta Maria libera nos a poenis inferni, which is slightly concave because it came from the old church's apse and had been kept after the demolition by the Oblates of Tor de' Specchi. The altar of the old church was moved here as well, and the mosaic on the façade reproduces one of its decorations.
Visit
Piazza di Santa Maria Liberatrice, 00153 Roma RM
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