What does it mean to do the Giro delle Sette Chiese, or the Route of the Seven Churches? And what does it have to do with Rome’s newly inaugurated Jubilee?
Find out on this all-new mini-episode! Plus, learn some fun facts about Rome’s seven most important churches!
To find out more about Rome’s Jubilee, don’t miss our previous mini-episode, Bittersweet Moment #215: Rome’s Jubilee Arrives!
And don’t miss your chance to visit Rome with us, on our intimate Rome listener trip, coming up in October 2025. Find out all about it here, or email us for more information!
You can listen to the episode right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 485: A Night at the Vatican
Bittersweet Moment #212: Behind the Scenes at the Vatican
Bittersweet Moment #189: Baptized by the Pope
Bittersweet Moment #93: ItalyGate: Vatican Blackout Conspiracy Theory
Bittersweet Moment #68: Outside the Vatican
Bittersweet Moment #11: VATICAN
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- The “Giro delle Sette Chiese” (Route of the Seven Churches) is a 20km Roman pilgrimage connecting four papal basilicas and three important minor basilicas, formalized in the late 1500s.
- The four papal basilicas are St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, St. John Lateran, and St. Mary Major. The three minor basilicas are St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, St. Sebastian Outside the Walls, and the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.
- Each basilica has unique historical and religious significance, such as St. Peter’s housing Charlemagne’s coronation site and St. John Lateran being Rome’s official cathedral.
- The pilgrimage route was originally meant to be completed in one day and was considered a serious spiritual undertaking that could reduce one’s time in purgatory.
- In modern Italian, especially in Rome, the phrase “Fare il Giro delle Sette Chiese” is used idiomatically to describe spending a long time trying to accomplish something without success, often related to bureaucratic processes.
Full Episode Transcript:
Hello, I’m Katy Sewall and this is A Bittersweet Moment with Tiffany Parks.
Hello and welcome to The Bittersweet Life. I’m Tiffany Parks and this is your midweek Bittersweet Moment. So, continuing on our theme of Rome’s Jubilee, go back and listen to the previous Bittersweet Moment if you want to learn about what the Jubilee is and how it got started.
Today, I’m going to talk about the so-called Giro delle Sette Chiese, or the Route of the Seven Churches. So the Route of the Seven Churches is a Roman pilgrimage that has existed in the Eternal City since the Middle Ages. It was formalized in the late 1500s during the Counter Reformation, and it’s a 20 kilometer circular path that connects all four of Rome’s papal basilicas. So that’s St. Peter’s St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major, as well as three of the most important minor basilicas, which are St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, St. Sebastian Outside the walls, and the Holy Cross of Jerusalem, to give their English names.
Originally, this itinerary was meant to be completed in one day and at 20 km long, circling the entire city and going well into the countryside—if you were doing this over 100 years ago—that was a serious and a pilgrimage that could definitely get a lot of your purgatory time erased.
So there’s so much to say about each of these seven churches. Honestly, I could fill probably seven podcasts if I were to talk about each of these basilicas in detail. So I’m going to limit myself to one fun fact about each of these seven basilicas.
So starting with St. Peter’s Basilica, there’s a lot to see in that church. But the one particular thing I want to point out right now is that if you walk inside and stand basically on the other side of the central doors, right inside the central doors, which will almost certainly be closed, you’ll find an enormous round porphyry slab embedded into the floor. So porphyry, if you’re not familiar, is a very type of dark, reddish purple stone. So this slab predates St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s older than the church itself because it was of the medieval St. Peter’s Basilica, the original church, which stood on the same spot and was built during the reign of Emperor Constantine. And that church obviously no longer exists anymore, but the slab of stone was preserved. And the reason is because on that piece of stone, on Christmas Day in the year 800, Charlemagne knelt on that stone and was crowned the very first holy Roman emperor. M
oving on to San Giovanni in Laterano. It’s officially Rome’s oldest public church, having been inaugurated in the year 324 by Pope Sylvester. Although like many churches of that period, it was rebuilt again and again over the centuries because of the many fires and sackings that this city underwent. So the current structure dates mostly to the 14th century. What a lot of people don’t realize about San Giovanni is that it’s actually the cathedral of Rome and not St. Peter’s so a cathedral. There’s only one cathedral in every city, and it is the official seat of the bishop of that city. And in this case, the bishop of Rome is the pope. And it was here in the Lateran, in the Lateran palace, which has now been destroyed. But it was adjacent to the basilica. It was in that palace that the popes lived all through history, since the time of Emperor Constantine, up until the 14th century, when the papal headquarters were moved to the Vatican for the practical reason that it was easier to defend the Vatican area in those violent times.
Now, of all the four papal basilicas, San Paolo Fuori le Mura was the one that suffered the least amount of restorations and modernizations during subsequent centuries. It alone retained its Paleochristian architecture and materials as well, all the way into the 19th century. Tragically, the basilica burnt almost entirely to the ground in 1823 after two workers who had been repairing the roof failed to fully extinguish the embers that they were using to make new copper gutters. Thankfully, the medieval apse mosaics and the cloister, which were probably two of the most beautiful aspects of the church, they did survive. Unfortunately, the rest of the enormous church was lost. It was rebuilt over the following decades, and it was rebuilt in the exact same way it had originally been built. So, ironically, of the four papal basilicas, San Paolo is technically the youngest, but it has the oldest architectural style and appearance.
Now, according to an unbelievable legend, on the night of August 5th, 358, a miraculous snowfall. So a snowfall in the middle of the Roman summer fell on the Esquiline Hill, which is one of Rome’s seven, seven famous hills. And the snow basically covered a very, very small area. And it happened to be in the exact shape of a Roman basilica and the exact size. This was seen as a sign that God wanted a new papal basilica built on that spot. So Pope Liberius quickly complied, and the result was Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome’s fourth papal basilica. And every year on the 5th of August in Rome, there is a miraculous Snowfall reenactment that takes place at that church in honor of that event.
Now, as for the important minor basilicas, San Lorenzo Forre le Mura is believed by some to be the secret hiding place of the Holy Grail. Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, as its name implies, houses arguably the most important Christian relic in the world, the Cross of Christ, which was brought back from the Holy Land by the mother of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. Of course, it’s not intact anymore; it’s divided into many, many pieces. And lastly, San Sebastiano Fuori le Mura houses an amazing marble bust of Christ that was created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, probably the greatest Baroque sculptor, one of the greatest sculptors who ever lived. It’s really incredibly beautiful, and it’s the very last work that he ever created in his life. He was 78 years old when he did this, and he died the year after. And after passing from wealthy family to wealthy family for a while, it sort of disappeared about 200 years ago. Nobody knew where it went, and there were many claims to it. Lots of different churches claimed that they had it. There were lots of copies hanging around. But it wasn’t until the year 2001 that they actually discovered the original. And it was hidden in a convent adjacent to that church.
So after hearing all of that, would you do the Giro delle Sette Chiese? Would you walk 20km around Rome in one day to visit all of these churches?
One last fun fact. Today in Italian, especially in Rome, they use the expression “Fare il Giro delle Sette Chiese” (to do the Route of the Seven Churches) as a way of saying that you have spent a long time trying to accomplish something with no success. For example, you have crossed the city from one bureaucratic office to another. You’ve waited in long lines here, been told to go there, only to end up not having the right documents and having to go home without having completed your task. And anyone who’s ever lived in Rome can relate to that. Thanks so much for listening. Join us again. Bye.
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