Archbasilica of St. John Lateran (Cathedral) site features

The square in front is enormous and almost empty, and the building faces you across it like a civic monument rather than a church. A two-storey front of giant columns rises to a parapet, and along the top stand fifteen colossal figures against the sky, visible from streets away.

The doors at the centre are bronze, dark, and plainly older than everything round them. They are heavy, panelled, and the colour of a cooking pot.

Inside, the nave is white and vast and arranged in bays. Down both sides, huge niches are cut into the piers, and in each one stands an apostle two and a half times life size, caught mid-gesture. The effect is of walking down a corridor between giants.

The floor is the oldest thing you can see. Under your feet, cosmatesque work runs the length of the church — small discs and interlacing bands of porphyry and serpentine, geometric, worn smooth, and visibly medieval in a building that otherwise is not.

At the far end, a gothic canopy stands over the high altar, and beyond it the apse glows with mosaic.

Outside, through a door on the left, the noise stops. The cloister is a small square garden surrounded by twisted, inlaid double columns, no two the same, glittering with mosaic chips — and around its walls are stacked the fragments, sculptures and carved ornaments of the basilica that stood here before.

The bronze doors of the Roman Senate

The great central portal is made of the bronze leaves of the ancient Roman Curia, moved from Sant'Adriano al Foro Romano by Alexander VII in 1660.

The barracks under the nave

The Castra Nova equitum singularium, built by Septimius Severus in AD 193 — its substantial remains lie directly beneath the nave, found in the 20th century during restoration of the cosmatesque pavement.

The French President's canonry

The president of the French Republic is ex officio the First and Only Honorary Canon of this archbasilica, a title French heads of state have held since Henry IV.

Borromini's nave and the twelve Apostles

Borromini completely rebuilt the central nave and the aisles in 1650; the statues of the twelve Apostles were set into his niches in the 18th century.

Galilei's facade

Completed in 1735 under Clement XII, whose name the inscription carries: Clemens XII Pont Max Anno V….

The cloister

Pietro Vassalletto's masterpiece of cosmatesque art, by the family who also built the cloister at Saint Paul Outside the Walls, holding architectural elements, sculptures and ornaments from the ancient basilica. Open 09.00–18.00.

The museum

Turismo Roma singles out the museum of precious liturgical furnishings. Open 10.00–17.30.

The baptistery

The part of the complex open latest — 07.00–12.30 and 16.00–19.00.

The lost Giotto

Boniface VIII's benediction loggia was decorated with frescoes by Giotto and Cimabue, today lost.

The Holy Door

Inaugurated for the Jubilee of 2000, by the sculptor Floriano Bodini (1933–2005).