The cypress wood door

This fifth-century church looks the way churches looked before Rome went baroque: white, light-filled, with twenty-four ancient columns and almost no decoration.

Santa Sabina was built around 425 on the house of a Roman woman, and the columns come from a temple that once stood here. From outside what catches the eye most is the brick flank, with a row of tall windows above it that hold no glass but alabaster.

To the right of the portico there's a hole in the wall with a black stone inside it, which the story says the devil threw at Dominic, the Spanish priest who founded the Dominican order.

The reason to go in is hanging in the portico itself: a cypress wood door from the time the church was built, with panels carved with one of the oldest crucifixion scenes in existence.

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 that door and about the light falling through alabaster.