The church of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome is a key element for understanding the cultural and urban development of the Forum in the early centuries of the Middle Ages.
On its walls is preserved an exceptional collection of mural paintings (about 250 square meters), spanning from the founding period up to the 8th century. These are unique testimonies, in Rome and worldwide, for the knowledge of the development of early medieval and Byzantine art. In fact, almost the entire contemporaneous pictorial heritage existing in the Byzantine Empire was destroyed during Iconoclasm, a doctrine and movement against the veneration of images that arose in the Eastern Church in the 8th century, causing the destruction of a significant heritage of sacred art.
It represents an exceptional testament of painting not only Roman, but of the entire contemporary Greco-Byzantine world: Iconoclasm indeed erased much of the sacred imagery of that era.
Opening hours*
- 08:30 AM – 02:00 PM on Good Friday
- 02:00 PM – 07:45 PM on June 2
- 08:30 AM – 04:30 PM from January 2 to February 15
- 08:30 AM – 05:00 PM from February 16 to March 15
- 08:30 AM – 05:30 PM from March 16 to the last Saturday of March
- 08:30 AM – 07:15 PM from the last Sunday of March to August 31
- 08:30 AM – 07:00 PM from September 1 to September 30
- 08:30 AM – 06:30 PM from October 1 to the last Saturday of October
- 08:30 AM – 04:30 PM from the last Sunday of October to December 31
