Early Christian & Medieval Rome - Rare splendours from tempestuous times

Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow (British Airways) to Rome, where all seven nights are spent.

The church of the Quattro Coronati provides a perfect perspective on early medieval Rome, displaying successive retrenchment until an exquisite cloister was added in the 12th century. Thence to San Clemente, a superb columnar hall rebuilt after the 1084 sack of Rome – its fourth-century predecessor remains below. Afternoon around the Lateran, particularly the Baptistery and the chapels which surround it, before finishing at Santo Stefano Rotondo, that wonderful fifth-century puzzle of a building.

The Ionic nave arcade of San Crisogono, magnificent Pietro Cavallini frescoes at Santa Cecilia, overall splendour of Santa Maria. The afternoon takes us extra-muros, to San Lorenzo, a stunning sixth-century cemetery church to which a new nave was added around 1200. Then to Sant’Agnese, a massive funerary basilica to which a daughter of Constantine added her mausoleum, and where Pope Honorius I (625–638) built a second church for easier access to the underground tomb of Saint Agnes.

The Capitoline Museums were created in 1471 with the donation of the papacy’s collection of Antique sculpture to the city. Savour the contrasting treatments meted out to the tiny 6th-century church of San Marco, and the Franciscan reconstruction of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Afternoon examining the two principal Early Christian churches of the Roman forum – Santa Maria Antiqua and Santi Cosma e Damiano.

An opportunity to venture into the hills north of Rome, our eventual goal the important papal town of Viterbo – frequent seat of the 13th-century papacy. First, however, drive to Tuscánia to see an extraordinarily well-preserved pair of Romanesque churches. In Viterbo visit the surviving papal palace, cathedral and mendicant church of San Francesco (tomb of Clement IV).

Leisurely morning by the Aurelian walls. San Giovanni a Porta Latina, just inside the Appian Gate, was remodelled in the eigth and 12th centuries from a building first constructed c. 500. Continue south along the Via Appia Antica to the Catacombs of San Callisto. Here Christian burials underground spread architectural ornament and frescoes through an eventual total of 20 km of passages on five levels. The afternoon is free.

Morning examining a great trio of buildings – Santa Sabina, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and the Pantheon, the last influentially rededicated to the Virgin Mary in the seventh century. Afternoon on the Esquiline, starting with Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the four ‘major basilicas’ of Rome and still substantially as it was when rebuilt by Pope Sixtus III (432–440). Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede house between them the earliest Christian apse mosaic in Rome and the most magnificent Carolingian oratory.

Gentle drive out to Tarquinia to visit the fantastically ambitious former cathedral of Santa Maria in Castello, spectacularly situated within the medieval town walls. Drop back south to Rome Fiumicino; arrive Heathrow c. 6.30pm.