off the beaten path: discover the hidden gems of Rome

Santa Prassede is a 9th-century basilica with glorious Byzantine mosaics in the apse and filling a side chapel. Also here is a piece of the scourging column of Christ, brought from Constantinople in the Middle Ages, relics from the catacombs in the crypt, and a monument by a 17-year-old Bernini.

San Pietro in Vincoli (Saint Peter in Chains) is a minor basilica in Rome that houses Saint Peter’s chains and Michelangelo’s famous Moses statue. San Pietro in Vincoli was dedicated in 442 to house the two chains that bound Saint Peter . They remain fused together and are kept in a reliquary under the main altar in the basilica. The interior has a nave and two aisles, with three apses divided by antique Doric columns. The aisles are surmounted by cross-vaults, while the nave has an 18th century coffered ceiling, frescoed in the center by Giovanni Battista Parodi, portraying the Miracle of the Chains (1706).The biggest attraction here is not the chains, it seems, but a statue carved by Michelangelo: “Moses” (completed in 1515). It was originally intended as part of a 47-statue, free-standing funeral monument for Pope Julius II, instead it became the centerpiece of the Pope’s tomb in this, the church of the della Rovere family