Description

According to legend, San Lorenzo in Panisperna is located on the spot at which martyr St. Lawrence of Rome was grilled to death. It was constructed (by one account) at the beginning of the fourth century during the reign of Constantine. San Lorenzo’s relics made it a moderately successful pilgrimage church. Records of the church are scanty. At the end of the tenth century, a Benedictine monastery was apparently built alongside the church. According to Richard Krautheimer, this was done to protect nearby Santa Maria Maggiore from the encroaching disabitato. The peasants and dependents of a monastery could help populate the area.

In 1290, Giacamo Cardinal Colonna, of the powerful Roman family, renovated the monastery and ceded it to the Poor Clares, female Franciscan nuns. It became a comfortable “society convent,” a home for unmarried, well-to-do Roman women. Saint Bridget of Sweden, who is strongly associated with the church, in many ways exemplifies its residents. Born to a wealthy noble family, she joined the Third Order of the Franciscans and made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1250 to combat what she viewed as the Church’s moral decay. She was motivated to do so by what she believed to be divine revelations. She lived at San Lorenzo for the remaining 23 years of her life. Her efforts to end corruption won her the admiration of Romans.

The medieval church was largely erased in a Baroque restoration in 1589, and the sprawling Ministero del Interno complex was built on the monastery grounds following Italian unification. The dwelling along Via Cesare Balbo, however, dates to the medieval period.

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Source

Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Hart, Vaughan and Peter Hicks. Palladio’s Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Majanlahti, Anthony. The Families Who Made Rome. New York: Pimlico, 2006.

Geolocation