The body that hadn't decayed

Behind this wall with its gate and front garden stands a church built on the house of a Roman woman. Cecilia is said to have been put to death in her own bathhouse in the third century, first by suffocation in the steam and then by the sword, and the execution failed so completely that she took days to die.

The complex is still used by a community of nuns, and the front garden with its roses and the large marble vase at its centre is one of the quietest spots in the neighbourhood.

Beneath the high altar lies the statue that makes this church more than a handsome facade: a marble woman on her side, carved in 1600 by a sculptor who declared he had seen her lying just like that when the sarcophagus was opened.

The church is free to enter, with a midday closing as elsewhere. Inside, the second story of this stop is waiting for you, about that statue and about what is missing from it.