When thinking of Rome, churches built during the Renaissance or Baroque period may be the first to come to mind. The Eternal City, however, is also home to medieval gems like the Church of St. Saba, a 1,300-year-old monastic complex standing on the “little” Aventine, a portion of Rome located between the Aventine and the Celio hills surrounded by the eponymous St. Saba neighborhood.
St. Saba’s origins go back to 645, when a group of monks from the Monastery of St. Sabas fled the Middle East due to foreign invasions and came to Rome to attend the Lateran Council. The refugee-monks eventually settled in a previously existing church dedicated to St. Silvia, mother of Pope Gregory the Great, located in the then-rural area on the crest of the Aventine Hill.
There, the monks contributed to spreading the monastic rule of St. Sabas (439-532), one of the leaders of Palestinian monasticism, focused on the practice of writing, reading, and tending to the local community. During the Middle Ages, the Monastery and Church of St. Saba became one of Rome’s most prestigious churches, fostering relations between Rome and Byzantium and representing the Roman Church at councils held in Constantinople.
During the later part of the Middle Ages, the Sabaite monks passed the baton to a series of other monastic orders, including Benedictines, Cistercians, Cluniancs, Franciscans, and finally to the Jesuits who still live in the monastery, which was declared a parish in 1931 by Pope Pius XI.
St. Saba's current architecture reflects the diverse history of the monastery’s occupants. The main church is structured around a central nave embraced by two aisles, both of which contain decorations of different artistic styles and two frescoes, one depicting scenes from the life of Christ and one depicting scenes from the life of Mary, believed to be the earliest instances of the application of ancient rock pigment lapis-lazuli for frescoes made in Western Europe.
For centuries, St. Saba’s monastic complex was the only human settlement in the area, as shown by pictures dating to the early 1900s that depict the church as a lone building standing in the middle of the woody hills. Starting from 1914, Rome’s municipality started to build residential units in the previously unpopulated area around St. Saba under the guidance of architect Quadrio Pirani who opted for spacious detached homes painted with colors that match the tone of the bricks of the 1300-year-old church.
Today, St. Saba’s neighborhood is a hidden gem offering shaded boulevards, hilltop views of Rome, and access to one of the city’s most important medieval churches.
