Santa Maria in Trastevere Doorway rome Italy

by Joan Carroll

Title

Santa Maria in Trastevere Doorway rome Italy

Artist

Joan Carroll

Medium

Photograph - Photography And Digital Art

Description

Early one winter morning, I went to visit the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome Italy. Since it wasn’t yet open, I hung around the Piazza Santa María in Trastevere watching the early morning activity. There were the street cleaners, with the huge job of cleaning up the mountains of trash and beer cans from the previous night. They definitely had a ‘system’, fascinating to watch. There was the small group of men hanging around the fountain in the center of the piazza getting an early start on the day’s beer. They didn’t seem to have anywhere better to go, and wait as I might to photograph the fountain, it seemed like they had taken up their station for the day. There was a larger group waiting for the church to open perhaps for some community services or activity since they didn’t head into the nave. Finally, the bells in the tower rang 7:30 am and I made my way toward the door of the church. But before entering the nave, I see the low winter sun casting beautiful shadows of the gates onto the portico, with a view within. As far as I can tell, the collection of inscriptions are of pagan and early Christian (3rd century) origin with some fragments of 9th century sculpture thrown in. Maybe later in the day more parishioners/tourists would visit but on this day, the church seemed more part of the fabric of life than a grand ‘Basilica’. In fact, one website states that “the Church has always been the focus of local religious and civic life and, as been famously remarked, if Trastevere were a small city on a duty hilltop in southern Italy, instead of being a district on the ‘wrong’ side of the river in the heart of Rome, Santa Maria in Trastevere would be its cathedral”. The Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere is a titular minor basilica in the Trastevere district of Rome, and is one of the oldest churches of Rome. Its history is rich and complex with the first sanctuary built in 221 and 227, the basic floor plan and wall structure dating to the 340s, and much of the structure dating to 1140-43. Not to mention various refurbishments, changes, and rebuildings in between.

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July 17th, 2019

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