The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Lazio
15 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in Lazio are Castel Sant'Angelo, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Basilica of San Clemente, Rome. The list covers 15 sacred places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Lazio's sacred places are dominated by Rome, a city that has been a religious capital for two thousand years. Pagan temples became churches, imperial tombs became fortresses, and from the Renaissance onwards the popes made Rome a laboratory of architecture, where Bramante, Bernini and Borromini competed on a few streets. Beyond the city, the hills of Lazio sheltered the beginnings of Western monasticism.
The Pantheon, a Roman temple consecrated as a church, still has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, open to the sky through its oculus. The Archbasilica of St John Lateran is the cathedral of Rome, and Santa Maria Maggiore keeps fifth-century mosaics. Castel Sant'Angelo began as the mausoleum of Hadrian before becoming a papal fortress. Beneath the Basilica of San Clemente, a twelfth-century church sits on a fourth-century one, which in turn rests on a Roman house and a temple of Mithras.
The Renaissance and Baroque appear in Bramante's Tempietto, a perfect small circle of columns, and in Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, with its spiralling lantern. In Sant'Ignazio, Andrea Pozzo painted a ceiling that dissolves into heaven and a dome that does not exist. The Capuchin Crypt is decorated with the bones of friars, and at Subiaco the Sacro Speco clings to a cliff around the cave where Saint Benedict lived as a hermit.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | |
| 2 | San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane | Church building | |
| 3 | Basilica of San Clemente, Rome | Temple | |
| 4 | Sant'Ignazio Church | Church building | |
| 5 | Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore | Church building | ✓ |
| 6 | Catacomb of Priscilla | Catacombs | |
| 7 | Tempietto | Church building | |
| 8 | Pantheon, Rome | Archaeological site | |
| 9 | Archbasilica of St. John Lateran | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 10 | Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls | Church building | ✓ |
| 11 | Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter | Catacombs | |
| 12 | Catacombs of Domitilla | Catacombs | |
| 13 | Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza | Church building | |
| 14 | Capuchin Crypt | Catacombs | |
| 15 | Sacro Speco (Monastery of Saint Benedict), Subiaco | Abbey |
01 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay Its current name comes from a specific legend: in 590 CE, during a plague, Pope Gregory the Great is said to have seen the Archangel Michael appear on the summit sheathing his sword — read as a sign the epidemic was ending. A statue of the angel has stood on top ever since, and the building has cycled through duty as papal residence, state prison, and now museum, on top of its original job as a tomb.
Did you know? When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, looters scattered the imperial urns and their ashes.
02 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.902° N 12.491° E
Alexkom000 · CC BY 4.0 The church was built between 1638 and 1641 and consecrated in 1646. Its walls ripple in and out around an elongated plan, and above them rises an oval dome whose surface is covered with a deep, interlocking pattern of coffers, crosses, octagons and hexagons, which shrink as they climb towards the lantern. The effect is of a dome much higher than it really is.
Did you know? The triangular balusters of the cloister alternate upright and inverted, which Borromini said improved the view from the upper gallery down to the ground floor.
03 Basilica of San Clemente, Rome
Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano
Italy · 1.7 km from Rome41.889° N 12.498° E
Johann Rudolf Rahn · Public domain The deepest level holds foundations from before the Great Fire of AD 64, over which an industrial building — probably the imperial mint — and an apartment block were raised in the Flavian period. 6 metres long, its far end trimmed with pumice to suggest a cave, with an altar showing Mithras killing the bull.
Did you know? Church councils were held in the earlier basilica under Pope Zosimus in 417 and Pope Symmachus in 499.
04 Sant'Ignazio Church
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola in Campo Marzio
Italy · 0.2 km from Rome41.899° N 12.480° E
Fiat 500e · CC BY 4.0 The church was built for the Roman College, the Jesuit school founded in 1551 that grew into the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Ignatius was canonised in 1622, Pope Gregory XV, a former pupil of the college, proposed a new church in his honour, and his nephew Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi paid for it. After considering several plans, including one by Carlo Maderno, the cardinal chose a design by the Jesuit mathematician Orazio Grassi.
Did you know? Pozzo won approval for the false dome by showing the college rector an oil sketch, which survives in Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.
05 Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.898° N 12.499° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
L'Ospite Inatteso · CC BY-SA 4.0 A legend first recorded after the year 1000 tells that on 5 August, at the height of a Roman summer, snow fell on the Esquiline to show where the church should be built. The story gave the basilica its other name, Our Lady of the Snows.
Did you know? Pope Francis was the first pope buried outside the Vatican since Leo XIII in 1903, and the first in this basilica since Clement IX in 1669.
06 Catacomb of Priscilla
Catacombe di Priscilla
Italy · 4.2 km from Rome41.930° N 12.509° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain What draws people underground is the painting. In the so-called Greek Chapel, a small square chamber decorated in the third century, scenes from the Old and New Testaments cover the walls, among them the scene known as the Fractio Panis, the breaking of bread.
07 Tempietto
Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio
Italy · 1.6 km from Rome41.889° N 12.466° E
Sailko · CC BY-SA 3.0 Donato Bramante, who would soon go on to design the new St Peter's Basilica, took the circular temples of ancient Rome as his model and recast them with mathematical rigour. 5 metres across inside. Above them runs a frieze of triglyphs and metopes and a balustrade, then a drum with pilasters and niches, and finally a hemispherical dome.
Did you know? Four deep shell-headed niches inside the tiny cella hold small statues of the four Evangelists, above a Cosmatesque floor of coloured marble.
08 Pantheon, Rome
Pantheon
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.899° N 12.477° E
Image by falcon505 from Pixabay 3 metres and the interior is exactly as high as it is wide, so a sphere of that size would fit inside it. After almost nineteen centuries it is still the largest dome of unreinforced concrete in the world. The Roman builders made this possible by lightening the mix as it rose, from heavy travertine aggregate at the base through brick to pumice and tufa at the crown, and by hollowing the underside into five rings of 28 coffers.
Did you know? Brunelleschi studied the dome closely before building his own over Florence Cathedral, which was completed in 1436 and is slightly narrower.
09 Archbasilica of St. John Lateran
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
Italy · 2.5 km from Rome41.886° N 12.506° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0 Earthquakes and fires took the old basilica apart more than once — an earthquake in 897 brought it down "from the altar to the doors", and fires in 1308 and around 1360 ravaged its replacement — and today's building is largely a Baroque transformation.
Did you know? The Lateran Obelisk weighs an estimated 455 tonnes; brought to Rome in 357 for the Circus Maximus, it later broke, was buried, and was re-erected here in 1588.
10 Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls
Basilica di San Paolo fuori le mura
Italy · 4.4 km from Rome41.859° N 12.477° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by loveombra from Pixabay What visitors see today is the 19th-century rebuilding, completed in 1840: the same five-aisled plan, about 132 metres long, with 80 columns marching down the nave under a wood and stucco ceiling, and windows of translucent alabaster that glow like stained glass. The scale and the cold perfection of the interior make it one of the most striking church spaces in Rome.
11 Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter
Catacombe dei Santi Marcellino e Pietro
Italy · 6 km from Rome41.879° N 12.549° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain Their fame rests on their paintings. More than eighty decorated chambers hold one of the most complete galleries of late antique art: the story of Jonah told in several scenes, Daniel among the lions, the raising of Lazarus, Moses striking water from the rock, Orpheus with his lyre, and a series of banquet scenes linked to funeral meals, both real and symbolic.
12 Catacombs of Domitilla
Catacombe di Domitilla
Italy · 4.8 km from Rome41.859° N 12.506° E
Anonymous Unknown author · Public domain The cemetery takes its name from Flavia Domitilla, a woman of the imperial Flavian family of Vespasian, on whose land the earliest burial grounds were dug. Its oldest core, the so-called hypogeum of the Flavians, goes back to the late second century; over the following two hundred years family tombs grew together into a vast communal necropolis, extended downward and outward as space ran out.
Did you know? A surviving altar column shows the beheading of Achilleus, a rare scene in early Christian art.
13 Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
Chiesa di Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
Italy · 0.5 km from Rome41.898° N 12.475° E
Image by ivosilvestro from Pixabay Borromini based the plan on a six-pointed star formed by two overlapping triangles, a figure associated with Solomon and therefore with wisdom - fitting for a university chapel, since Sapienza means wisdom. Inside, the rotunda is shaped as a triangle with its corners clipped, alternating with semicircles, so that curves and sharp edges are used in equal measure and the walls seem to swell and contract.
Did you know? The same complex includes the Biblioteca Alessandrina, a university library begun by Borromini and completed only after his death.
14 Capuchin Crypt
Italy · 1 km from Rome41.905° N 12.489° E
Anil Öztas · CC BY 4.0 The friars moved to this church in 1631 and brought with them some 300 cartloads of remains from their old friary. The soil of the crypt, according to tradition, was brought from Jerusalem at the order of Pope Urban VIII. As each friar died, the one who had lain longest in the earth, often around thirty years, was exhumed to make room, and his bones were added to the decoration.
Did you know? The Mass Chapel also contains a tomb of Papal Zouaves, the volunteer soldiers who defended the Papal States.
15 Sacro Speco (Monastery of Saint Benedict), Subiaco
Monastero di San Benedetto (Subiaco)
Italy41.917° N 13.118° E
Simone Frignani · CC BY-SA 4.0 According to tradition, Benedict withdrew from the world as a youth around the end of the fifth century and spent three years in a cave above the river, fed by a monk named Romanus who lowered food to him. From Subiaco he went on to found twelve small monasteries, and the experience shaped the rule and organisation of the Benedictine order.
Did you know? The oldest painting in the complex, a Byzantine fresco fragment of the eighth century, survives in the so-called Grotto of the Shepherds.
More about Sacro Speco (Monastery of Saint Benedict), Subiaco →
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful sacred places in Lazio?
- On our list, Castel Sant'Angelo ranks first, followed by San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Basilica of San Clemente, Rome.
- What is the cathedral of Rome?
- The cathedral of Rome is the Archbasilica of St John Lateran, not St Peter's Basilica. It is the seat of the Pope as Bishop of Rome and is called the mother of all churches.
- What is under the Basilica of San Clemente?
- Excavations below the twelfth-century basilica revealed a fourth-century church and, beneath that, Roman buildings including a sanctuary of the god Mithras. Visitors can descend through all three levels.
- Why is the Pantheon's dome so remarkable?
- Built under Hadrian in the second century, it remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Its concrete gets lighter towards the top, and the open oculus at its centre is the only source of light.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Lazio?
- The list covers 15 sacred places.