[Much of my site will be useless to you if you've got the images turned off!]

Part of St. George's Skull Is Here

We've all heard of "going straight for the jugular"; well, I have a definite tendency to go straight for the capillaries, as it were. This beautiful church has glorious 13c frescoes and a beautiful high medieval marble altar enclosing some of St. George's bones — which St. George and which bones exactly is a matter of doubt, or of my ignorance at least, and that's delaying the pages — but for now I'm giving you this:

[ 1/23/00: 4 pages, 4 photos ]

In Roman times, a Cattle Market (Forum Boarium) thrived in this area for centuries. Bankers connected with it built a curious monument here now usually referred to as The Arch of the Argentarii. Over the centuries it somehow got attached to the church: it's what the crowd of schoolkids is peering at in the photo above. It's not an arch, by the way, and it's not of the best period, but the sculpture is interesting.

[ 4/30/00: 4 pages, 5 photos ]

The arcaded porch so typical of the older mediaeval Roman churches is often used to house nice bits of sculpture and inscriptions that don't really belong in church, but that seemed worth keeping. S. Giorgio has a rather nice collection of Roman inscriptions. I'll be putting several online: the first three are up now.

For the more studious, some good basic topographical and art history information is immediately available: Christian Hülsen's article on this church in Le Chiese di Roma nel Medio Evo, linked to 2 further important texts — Armellini's Le Chiese di Roma and the article in the 1763 edition of Filippo Titi's guidebook.

Images with borders lead to more information.
The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)

UP TO:

Churches
of Rome

Rome

Italy

Europe

Gazetteer

Home

OFF
SITE:

Official
Site

A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer.