Today I suggest you to take a walk off the beaten track, on the Aventine Hill. This is the most isolated of the seven roman hills, and I promise you that there you will not find one single shop, no crowd, no noise. On the Aventine you will find enchanted, peaceful alleys with elegant villas and agarden providing a breathtaking view over the city.
On the Aventine you will find Santa Sabine. No other church like Santa Sabina still keeps in Rome this magic and mystical look of an early Christian basilica. Nobody knows from where the marvelous columns come from. Very likely from a pagan monument demolished by Christians. Anyway, entering in Santa Sabina, you feel immediately that the Church in the fifth century adopted the solemn and sober style of the pagan buildings. We will have to talk about that, for example at the Vatican. Most of the people don’t know that the Christian Church inherited the culture of the pagan Empire. The official language of the Church still is, in 2015, latin….
Santa Sabine hides an exceptional jewel, the oldest wooden door of Rome. Dating back, as the church itself, to mid fifth century, this door is composed by different carved scenes about the Old and the New Testament. Here you will find the first image of Christ on the cross.Crucifixion was an awful punishment, reserved to the worst criminals, and Christians in the first centuries didn’t want to depict Christ like this. If you look carefully you will find also a peculiar Egyptian pharaoh, ready to sink in the Red Sea.
He looks very much like Napoleon! Actually the bad pharaoh’s features were reworked in 1830 to depict Napoleon, since romans didn’t really appreciate the French who had occupied their city.
