what you'll experience

• Descend through layers of time

  Step inside San Clemente and feel Rome stack itself beneath your feet: a basilica above, an older church below, and a Roman street deeper still. Each step draws you further into the city’s buried life.

• Take in the golden apse mosaic

  Look up to the 12th-century apse mosaic, glowing in gold and sacred symbols, then let your eyes drop to the Cosmatesque floor beneath you. Geometric patterns and colours make the whole space feel rich and alive.

• Enter the earliest Christian layers of Rome

  Go below into a 4th-century church, where faded frescoes and the outline of the ancient basilica still hold traces of worship. Scratched into the plaster, some of the earliest written Italian makes the space feel vivid and real.

• Discover the hidden Mithraeum below

  Go deeper into the 1st-century Mithraic temple, where a Roman street and underground stream reveal a forgotten layer of the city. Once a secret cult space, it now feels strange, long lost and far from modern Rome.

• Step inside Santo Stefano Rotondo (optional)

  If you choose the extended option, continue to Santo Stefano Rotondo, where a rare circular church and vivid martyrdom frescoes surround you. It reveals a darker, more unsettling side of early Christian Rome.