041 santa cecilia in trastevere

This church, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, is just one block over from my office, and I frequently peek in the courtyard to see if it is open, but it is always, always closed. Until yesterday afternoon, when I saw that the doors were open. I hung around in the courtyard for a few minutes, trying to deduce whether there was something going on in the church, and after a few tourists entered the church, I pulled on my black sweater (bare shoulders are a no-no in Italian churches; I had short sleeves on but didn't want to take any chances) and slipped inside.



The church was built on the spot where poor Cecilia was martyred in the 3rd century. The story goes that when she was exposed as a Christian, she was locked in her bathroom, doomed to die from suffocation from steam. However, she survived this, singing the entire time, which is why she is the patron saint of music. Additionally, the main music academy here in Rome is named after her.

Next, a Roman soldier tried to decapitate her three times, but he was unsuccessful in the short term; she died three days later. The sculpture on the main altar shows Cecilia with a gruesome divot in the marble for her neck, and she is buried below the church. A quick internet search shows that many history scholars think that the Cecilia story is a myth invented in the 500s, but it's interesting nonetheless.

This morning, I talked to an intern from Canada today, Camille, and she said that the first thing she was going to do when she got back home was rent the Indiana Jones movies, which I thought was hilarious, because I was recently thinking the exact same thing!