The gridiron

This church has a freestanding bell tower from the twelfth century and a forecourt with antique columns taken from older buildings, and the whole ensemble hides away behind the shopping streets of this neighbourhood.

The name Lucina comes from the woman who gave her house to the Christian community here in the fourth century, and beneath the floor you can still find remains of that Roman residential block.

Behind the door lies something grimmer. In a chapel to the right of the entrance they keep an iron gridiron on which, according to tradition, Laurence was put to death in the year 258, and against one of the pillars hangs the tomb of a French painter who worked here for forty years.

The church is free, with the same midday closing you find elsewhere in the city. Inside, the second part of this stop is waiting for you, about that gridiron and about who else lies buried here.