What to see in Esquilino

Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

One of the four great papal basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore is the largest church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin and the only one to have preserved its early-Christian core intact. Legend says it was founded after the Virgin appeared to Pope Liberius in 358 and asked for a church to be built where snow would fall in August — and on the morning of 5 August, snow duly dusted the Esquiline hill. The miracle is re-enacted every year with a shower of white petals from the ceiling.

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Parco di Piazza Vittorio

Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II is the great rectangular square at the heart of the Esquilino, the largest in central Rome, laid out in the 1870s and ringed by long Umbertine porticoes that give it the air of a northern Italian city. At its centre is a leafy public garden — the Giardini di Piazza Vittorio — where the whole multicultural neighbourhood comes to sit, play and meet.

Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme

One of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome, Santa Croce stands at the eastern edge of the Esquilino, against the Aurelian Walls. It was founded around 325 inside the Sessorium, the imperial residence of St Helena, mother of Constantine — who, according to tradition, brought back the relics of Christ's Passion from the Holy Land and consecrated earth from Calvary, scattered in the foundations, which gives the church its name "in Jerusalem".

Chiesa di Santa Prassede

A few steps from Santa Maria Maggiore, down a side street, the plain brick exterior of Santa Prassede gives no hint of what waits inside. Rebuilt by Pope Paschal I in the early 9th century, in the Carolingian revival, it holds some of the most dazzling Byzantine-style mosaics in Rome, blazing across the apse and the triumphal arch with the gold of a heavenly Jerusalem.

Palazzo Merulana

On Via Merulana, the broad avenue linking Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni, Palazzo Merulana is a museum of early-20th-century Italian art set in a striking Umbertine building of 1929 — originally the city's Hygiene Office, bombed in the war, left a gutted ruin for decades, and reborn in 2018 after a careful restoration.

Arco di Gallieno

Squeezed between later houses on the narrow Via di San Vito, the Arco di Gallieno is far older than it looks — it is the ancient Porta Esquilina, one of the gates of the Servian Walls that ringed Rome from the 6th century BC. Rebuilt in plain travertine by Augustus as a triple-arched gate, it was the point where the Clivus Suburanus left the city toward the eastern hills.

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What to see Esquilino

Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

Parco di Piazza Vittorio

Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme

Chiesa di Santa Prassede

Palazzo Merulana

Arco di Gallieno

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