Today I would like to talk about the extraordinary underground area located beneath the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata, along Via del Corso. It is located on the left side of the famous Roman street, coming from Piazza Venezia, next to the eighteenth-century Palazzo Doria Pamphilj. One of the surprises of Rome, a place full of history, both from an archaeological and devotional point of view, as it is linked to the figure, in particular, of Saint Paul. For this reason, the in-depth analysis of this little pearl of Rome will be divided into two articles. Next time I will talk specifically about the decorative apparatus discovered during the archaeological excavations and the religious tradition of the place, while today I would like to focus on the historical and topographical evolution of the area, useful for understanding how difficult it is, at times, in Rome to establish what was there thousands of years ago. Or, as I often tell foreign tourists, during one of my tours, talking about the stratification of the Eternal City, how Rome is a sort of historical lasagna.

Today, in fact, underneath the church it is possible to visit six small rooms, arranged in two rows of three, plus a seventh room a little larger than the others. These spaces were created during the 4th century from a porticoed area which had four rows of columns, which ran to form three naves (as seen in the photo), with the central one wider than the two lateral ones. What was the function of this porticoed area? Even today we don't know... Perhaps there were tabernae, perhaps a structure with a roof useful for shelter from the rain, for conducting business or who knows what else. It is even probable that the two short sides were closed by a wall that closed the arches of the pillars. Then, in the 4th century, some rooms were created from this large portico. What were they for? We don't know... We thought about horrea which were roman warehouses, but the probable presence of a mezzanine (therefore a mezzanine floor) suggests that the rooms were small shops with the owners' houses above. Only in the 8th century AD do we begin to speak, in documents, of a real diakonia. These rooms would have officially become a place for Christian worship under pope Sergius I, and some frescoes testify to this. The long history continues with the construction of a real church in the 11th century, a complete renovation under the pontificate of Alexander VI Borgia at the end of the 1400s (done badly due to too much haste), to then arrive at the current church seventeenth-century located above the underground area.

As you can imagine, it doesn't take much to have an intricate story, made up of numerous modifications, changes and, above all, questions and gaps to fill. A single area like this presents more questions than anything else, but that, after all, is its charm. And let's not forget that, as previously mentioned, the underground area of the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata is particularly linked to eminent personalities of Christianity, including Saint Luke, Saint Paul, Saint Peter , among others. However, I will tell you about this in the next article.