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.

The church is free and closes for a couple of hours around midday. Inside, an apse of gold glows above the altar, and the columns below it carry heads that were worshipped here centuries before Christianity.