The Spring of Oil

This is one of the oldest churches in Rome, and possibly the first one dedicated to Mary. The facade carries a mosaic from the twelfth century showing ten women holding lamps, and that image has hung there in the open air above your head for more than eight hundred years.

The place owes its story to oil. According to tradition, a spring of oil welled up here out of the ground in 38 BC and flowed toward the river for a whole day. The Romans read it as an omen, and later Christians saw it as an announcement of the birth of Christ. Inside the church, the spot is still marked.

When you step in, the gold of the apse is the first thing you notice, and on the columns of the nave you find heads that come from an entirely different religion.

The church is free and closes for a couple of hours around midday. Inside, the second story of this stop is waiting for you, about the mosaic in the apse and about the Egyptian gods on the capitals.