Discover Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli

San Pietro in Vincoli — Saint Peter in Chains — is a Roman Catholic titular church and minor basilica on the Oppian Hill, near Cavour metro station and a short distance from the Colosseum. The name refers to the biblical story of the Liberation of Peter, and the church was built to hold the relic at its centre.

It is best known for something else: Michelangelo's Moses, part of the tomb of Pope Julius II, which stands in the right transept and can be seen without a ticket.

The building is also called the Basilica Eudoxiana. It was first rebuilt on older foundations between 432 and 440 to house the chains that bound Saint Peter during his imprisonment in Jerusalem. The Empress Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III, had received them from her mother Aelia Eudocia — who had been given them by Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, probably during a pilgrimage in 438–439 — and presented them to Pope Leo I. The chain is kept in a reliquary under the main altar.

Its later shape is Renaissance. Cardinal Della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV and later Pope Julius II himself, rebuilt substantially between 1471 and 1503; the front portico of 1475 is attributed to Baccio Pontelli and the cloister of 1493–1503 to Giuliano da Sangallo. The adjoining former convent now houses the Faculty of Engineering of La Sapienza, which confusingly carries the same name.

San Pietro in Vincoli — Saint Peter in Chains — is a Roman Catholic titular church and minor basilica on the Oppian Hill, near Cavour metro station and a short distance from the Colosseum. The name refers to the biblical story of the Liberation of Peter, and the church was built to hold the relic at its centre.

It is best known for something else: Michelangelo's Moses, part of the tomb of Pope Julius II, which stands in the right transept and can be seen without a ticket.

The building is also called the Basilica Eudoxiana. It was first rebuilt on older foundations between 432 and 440 to house the chains that bound Saint Peter during his imprisonment in Jerusalem. The Empress Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III, had received them from her mother Aelia Eudocia — who had been given them by Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, probably during a pilgrimage in 438–439 — and presented them to Pope Leo I. The chain is kept in a reliquary under the main altar.

Its later shape is Renaissance. Cardinal Della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV and later Pope Julius II himself, rebuilt substantially between 1471 and 1503; the front portico of 1475 is attributed to Baccio Pontelli and the cloister of 1493–1503 to Giuliano da Sangallo. The adjoining former convent now houses the Faculty of Engineering of La Sapienza, which confusingly carries the same name.

An early Christian basilica with a Renaissance front. The interior is a nave and two aisles ending in three apses, divided by antique Doric columns — reused, like most columns in Roman churches of this date. The aisles carry cross-vaults; the nave has an eighteenth-century coffered ceiling.

The portico is the Renaissance intervention you meet first. Added in 1475 and attributed to Baccio Pontelli, its five arches close the front of the church onto the piazza, and the cloister of 1493–1503, attributed to Giuliano da Sangallo, belongs to the same della Rovere campaign.

The interior is lower than it was built. The vault was lowered in 1705 under Francesco Fontana, and there was a further renovation in 1875 — so the proportion a visitor reads is eighteenth-century, not fifth. This is worth knowing in a church whose plan is otherwise almost intact.

The ceiling fresco states the church's founding claim. Giovanni Battista Parodi's Miracle of the Chains of 1706 fills the centre of the nave ceiling, showing Pope Alexander healing the neck goiter of Saint Balbina by touching her with the chains that had bound Saint Peter. The sources are blunt that the scene is based purely on a fable; the painting is nonetheless the building explaining itself.

It was built around an object, not around a congregation. The chains that bound Saint Peter in Jerusalem reached Rome as an imperial gift: Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, gave them to Aelia Eudocia, probably during a pilgrimage in 438–439; she passed them to her daughter, the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III, who presented them to Pope Leo I. The church was rebuilt on older foundations between 432 and 440 specifically to house them, which is why it is also called the Basilica Eudoxiana, and it was consecrated in 439 by Sixtus III. The relic is still the structural centre: it lies in a reliquary under the main altar, and the building is arranged around that point.

The fabric was repaired rather than replaced, for a thousand years. A restoration under Pope Adrian I and further work in the eleventh century kept the fifth-century basilica standing instead of superseding it, which is the reason the nave plan and its reused antique Doric columns survive at all.

The Renaissance campaign was a family project, and it determined what the church now contains. Between 1471 and 1503 Cardinal Della Rovere — nephew of Sixtus IV, and from 1503 Pope Julius II — carried out substantial rebuilding. The portico went up in 1475, attributed to Baccio Pontelli; the cloister followed between 1493 and 1503, attributed to Giuliano da Sangallo. Making San Pietro in Vincoli a della Rovere church is what later brought Julius II's tomb here rather than to St Peter's.

The tomb itself is the great unfinished thing. Michelangelo's Moses, completed in 1515, was originally intended as one element of a massive free-standing funeral monument of forty-seven statues. What was eventually built is a wall monument, and the Moses — conceived as a component — became its centrepiece. The sculpture a visitor sees is therefore doing a job it was not designed for, at a scale that reads oddly close up for exactly that reason.

The last structural campaigns lowered the church. In 1705 the architect Francesco Fontana lowered the vault, and the nave received its coffered ceiling, frescoed in the centre by Giovanni Battista Parodi in 1706. A further renovation followed in 1875. The height of the interior is thus an eighteenth-century decision imposed on a fifth-century plan, and it is the single biggest difference between the church as built and the church as visited.

Is Michelangelo's Moses really free to see? Yes. There is no admission charge, no ticket and no booking. A coin-operated light illuminates the statue.

What are the opening hours? No timetable is published in any form we could verify. The Canons Regular of the Lateran, who serve the basilica, have run an "under construction" website since 2017, and Turismo Roma directs enquirers to the contacts for the timetable of masses and visiting conditions. Telephone +39 06 45437949 on the day.

Why does Moses have horns? To connote the radiance of the Lord. The Hebrew word for "beams of light" resembles the word for "horns", and that kind of iconographic symbolism was common in early sacred art. Horns are also easier for a sculptor to carve than rays of light.

Why is the tomb of Julius II here and not in St Peter's? Because this was the della Rovere family church. Cardinal Della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV, rebuilt it between 1471 and 1503 and then became Pope Julius II.

Is the tomb what Michelangelo designed? No. The Moses was intended as one element of a free-standing monument of forty-seven statues. What exists is a wall tomb, with the Moses promoted to centrepiece.

What are the chains? The chains that bound Saint Peter during his imprisonment in Jerusalem, given to Pope Leo I by the Empress Eudoxia. They are in a reliquary under the main altar. By legend they fused with the chain from Peter's imprisonment in the Mamertine Prison when Leo compared the two.

How do I get there? Metro to Cavour, or walk up via Cavour from via dei Fori Imperiali and take the staircase of via San Francesco di Paola on the right. It is a short, steep walk from the Colosseum.

How long does it take? Half an hour.

Why is a university faculty called San Pietro in Vincoli? The adjacent former convent houses the Faculty of Engineering of La Sapienza, which took the church's name. The two are unrelated as institutions.