Roman monuments: the small church of the Colosseum
Roman monuments: the small church of the Colosseum. Santa Maria della Pietà, the small church of the Colosseum. Inside one of the most important monuments of Rome, the Flavian Amphitheater, in one of its large arches (to be precise the 24th arch), there is a small chapel dedicated to Santa Maria della Pietà.
The church was founded between the 6th and 7th centuries. It has always been a place of worship, probably in memory of the people who died inside the Colosseum.
The first information based on the church are those handed down by Cardinal Cencio Camerario, who was an illustrious historian and connoisseur of Roman churches. These documents date back to 1192, a time when it was known with the title of “Santissimo Salvatore in Rota Colisei”.
In 1490 the Compagnia del Gonfalone began to represent the drama of the Passion of Christ in the center of the great arena of the Colosseum.
Just like the Via Crucis which is celebrated every year starting from inside the Colosseum, retracing the stations up to the Temple of Venus and Rome.
Subsequently the same Company used the small church of Santa Maria della Pietà as a warehouse and wardrobe, to keep the clothes and the necessary for the scenes.
The church was a sacred shrine, already at the time of Pope Paul IV (1555-1559). Armellini says that: “… It was originally intended as the wardrobe of the company that used to represent the great drama of the Passion of Jesus Christ in the arena of the amphitheater, a use that continued until the time of Paul IV”.
Later, in 1622, the aedicule was purchased by the Confraternity of the Gonfalone who transformed it into an oratory, and entrusted it to a hermit monk who lived there permanently as custodian of the place. The oratory belonged to the Gonfalone until 1936; then it changed hands and was entrusted since 1955 to the Circolo San Pietro, which still manages it and celebrates a mass there every Saturday and Sunday. Inside, on the main altar, there is a 19th-century bas-relief depicting the Madonna of Sorrows.
In the eighteenth century, the architect Carlo Fontana proposed an ambitious project to build a church with a central plan near the chapel. The church would have had a dome surmounted by the statues of the evangelists and a pope, thus equaling the Colosseum in height; on the attic of the arcades instead the statues of the first Christians would have been placed; finally a fountain would have been built on the opposite side to that of the church. The Spanish Civil War, the Turkish invasions and the political and economic difficulties meant that the project was blocked.
In the small church the Circolo San Pietro celebrates Holy Mass on Saturdays at 4.00 pm and on Sundays at 10.30 am
