The oldest churches are the ones I like best. In this case, the basilica of Sancta Prassede, one of tge oldest in Rome. - started in 780 and dedicated to the teenage girl Praxede who was killed in 165 ( with her sister Pudentiana) for helping christians. The church sits on her family land which previously supported a roman bath structure. The then pope Paschal 1 commissioned the church to house the thousands of martyrs remains he had collected: they are buried under the church, as the slightly creepy inscription stone says. There’s more about him more on wikipedia. The mosaics in the apse include image of the pope offering the church to Saint Prassede : his halo is square, which apparently indicates he was alive at the time the mosaic was made. Besides the fabulous gold mosaics, the chapel of St Zeno, and the cosmati stone mosaic on floors and in the crypt below, I love this damaged but beautiful fresco of the Annunciation, painted by Stefano Pieri, a florentine working in the second half of the 1600s. The narrative and forms fit into the fabric of the back wall without seeming at all forced.
