Quick overview: We depart from the upper level of the Basilica of San Clemente to admire and understand the symbols and stories written on what are some of Rome's most beautiful mosaics and frescoes. Then we proceed to the excavations underneath discover the entire church from the 4th century with its sarcophagi, paintings and arcades. We than descend to the third level below ground to discover a road from the first century AD which separates a banquet room dedicated to the cult of Mithras from Clemente's house where the first Christians met up. In the beautiful piazza of San Giovanni in Laterano we'll visit the city's most ancient Baptistry with its octagonal layout, ancient baptismal font and frescoes depicting the various phases of the life of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor. We proceed then to the Holy Steps from Jerusalem, that Christ climbed and bled upon and on which numerous pilgrims ascend with their knees in prayer. In the largest Basilica after Saint Peter’s, we'll find Rome's most ancient doors that for centuries belonged to the Roman Senate. Here we'll discover, among other things, the remains of the table from the Last Supper as well as the heads of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Towards the end of the tour, we visit the catacombs, those incredible burial grounds where Renaissance scholars went in search of the past. The tour concludes on the stones of Rome's most ancient road, the via Appia, near the gigantic mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, where time seems to have stood still since the days where Nero and Saint Paul walked these roads.

Some themes of the tour: The beginning of the first millennium saw an explosion through the Roman Empire of new cults which sprang from a widespread need for a more direct and intimate relationship with God. The priests of the pagan roman religion didn't, in fact, hold to any vocation, they came from the body politic and returned to it after their sacred duties, moreover followers were not allowed inside the temples. The new religions, on the contrary, created a community which, as well as participating first-hand in rituals, gave a new meaning to the idea of "being together". They also rediscovered the sacred dimension of the sacrifice and the supper. Aside from the cult of Mithras, of which many traces can still be found in Rome, we will tell you, above all, about the first centuries of Christianity, beginning with the clandestine meeting places of the first followers; the spread of its symbols, such as, the phoenix for immortality, the dove and the fish; the many stories and legends of miracles and martyrs depicted in frescoes; the burials in catacombs; and the end of the persecutions and the establishment of Christianity as the sole religion of the empire. From here to the building of the first basilicas, the collection and veneration of Christ's reliquary and that of the martyrs, the theological debates against heresy, and the rise of a new symbolic art which negates the past and invents new forms and styles. A journey through places of intense spirituality and extreme beauty.