"Rome"ward Bound!: St. Paul's Outside the Walls

This is my favorite church in Rome - St. Paul's Outside the Walls. It is one of the four pilgrimage basilicas in Rome. When you first get to St. Paul's Outside the Walls, you enter a

large cloister with a statue of St. Paul (notice the sword) in the very center. Here is a photo of Paul with the statue of St. Paul so you can get an idea of just how large everything is.

Here are some photos of the inside of the basilica. Notice just how long the nave is. Here is a photo of Grace on the altar so you can tell how tall the baldacchino really is. Unfortunately, the angle isn't quite right, so it is still a little hard to tell.

The mosaics above the altar are just amazing.

There are two really special things about this church. The first is that it is the burial place for St. Paul. His sarcophagus is right under the baldacchino. You can go down a set of stairs from the altar to see the tomb. Right above the tomb is a glass case that contains the chain of nine links that chained St. Paul.

The second thing is that there are mosaic portraits of all the popes around the upper part of the basilica. They start just to the right of the altar with St. Peter and wind their way around the transept and the side aisles. The portrait of the current pope is always lit up. Here is a photo of Pope Benedict XVI's mosaic.