Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran
Roughly 4 km from Vatican City stands the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, the only church in the world with the title of archbasilica. Its official name is so long that nearly everyone shortens it to the Lateran Basilica or Saint John Lateran. This is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. It holds the seat of the pope in his role as bishop of Rome and head of the worldwide Catholic Church.
Yet it sits outside Vatican City proper. Under the Lateran Treaty of 1929, the church and its adjoining buildings count as properties of the Holy See and enjoy extraterritorial status from Italy. So why is the pope's own cathedral not at the Vatican? Where does the strange name Lateran come from? What stood here before any church, and what did the popes do when they stopped living next door?
In 324, Pope Sylvester I presided over the official dedication of the church and the neighboring Lateran Palace. He renamed the House of Fausta the Domus Dei, the House of God, and dedicated it to Christ the Saviour. That date makes the church the oldest public church in the city of Rome and the oldest basilica in the Western world. A cathedra, the chair that symbolizes a bishop's authority, was set inside for the pope.
The dedication traveled to England. When Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian mission under Augustine of Canterbury, some of the first churches in Canterbury took the Roman plan as their model. One was dedicated to Christ and another to Saint Paul, outside the city walls. Canterbury's Cathedral of Christ took its name from the Lateran's original dedication. That is the root of the name Christ Church, now so common among Anglican churches in the English-speaking world.
On the front wall between the main portals, a plaque carries a Latin inscription meaning "Most Holy Lateran Church, mother and head of all the churches in the city and the world." In the twelfth century, the canons of the Lateran went further. They claimed that the high altar housed the Ark of the Covenant, along with several holy objects from Jerusalem. That claim presented the basilica as the Temple of the New Covenant.
Two later rededications added new saints. Pope Sergius III dedicated the church and palace to Saint John the Baptist in the 10th century, after the church's baptistry was newly consecrated. Pope Lucius II later added Saint John the Evangelist. The two Johns became co-patrons, though Christ the Saviour remains the primary Titular, as is traditional for patriarchal cathedrals. The church became the most important shrine of the two saints, although they were rarely honored together. A Benedictine monastery was established in the Lateran Palace to serve the church and both saints. The anniversary of the dedication has been kept as a feast since the 12th century, on the 9th of November. The titular feast falls on the 6th of August, the Transfiguration of Christ.
Gifts from popes and other benefactors, recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, made the church so splendid that it was called the Basilica Aurea, the Golden Basilica. That reputation drew the Vandals, who stripped it of all its treasures. Pope Leo I restored it around AD 460, and Pope Hadrian I restored it again.
In 897, an earthquake nearly destroyed the church. A Latin record of the disaster says "it collapsed from the altar to the doors." So much was lost that the lines of the old building were hard to trace. The builders mostly respected them anyway, and the new church had the same dimensions as the old. This second basilica stood for 400 years.
Fire ended that long stretch in 1308. Pope Clement V and Pope John XXII rebuilt the church. In 1309, Clement V moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon, a papal fiefdom that formed an enclave in France. Every pope since Miltiades had lived in the Lateran Palace until then. The palace has also been the site of five ecumenical councils.
During the years in Avignon, the church and palace deteriorated. A second fire in the 1360s struck again, and Pope Urban V rebuilt the church. After both fires the pope sent money from Avignon to pay for reconstruction and maintenance. Even so, the buildings lost their former splendor.
When the papacy returned to Rome, the accumulated damage made the Lateran seem inadequate. The popes lived instead at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere and later at Santa Maria Maggiore. Eventually the Palace of the Vatican was built beside Saint Peter's Basilica, which has stood since the time of Emperor Constantine I. The popes began to live there, and it has remained the official papal residence ever since. Pope Francis chose the Domus Sanctae Marthae inside Vatican City instead of the papal apartments.
On the 3rd of August 1588, Pope Sixtus V had an Egyptian obelisk raised on a new pedestal in front of the Lateran Palace. It remains there as the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world, with an estimated weight of 455 tons. The Pharaoh Thutmose III commissioned it, and Thutmose IV erected it before the great Karnak temple at Thebes. Emperor Constantine I meant to ship it to Constantinople. Constantius II, who was very preoccupied, sent it to Rome instead, and it was erected in the Circus Maximus in AD 357. At some point it broke and was buried beneath the Circus. It was discovered and excavated in the 16th century.
The obelisk was one piece of a larger project. Several attempts at reconstruction had come before the definitive program of Sixtus V. He hired his favorite architect, Domenico Fontana, to supervise much of the work. The original Lateran Palace was demolished and replaced with a new building.
The year after the obelisk, 1589, Sixtus V also relocated the Scala Sancta, or Holy Stairs, to its present place in front of the ancient palatine chapel called the Sancta Sanctorum. The stairs are white marble steps encased in wooden ones, and the marble shows through openings in the wooden risers. Tradition holds that they once led to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, and that the footsteps of Jesus Christ sanctified them during His Passion. Their move to the Lateran Palace in the 4th century is credited to Saint Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine I. Ferraù Fenzoni completed some of the frescoes on the walls.
Standing somewhat apart from the church is the octagonal Lateran baptistery. Pope Sixtus III founded it, perhaps on an earlier structure. A legend arose that Emperor Constantine I was baptized there and enriched the building. For many generations it was the only baptistery in Rome. Its plan, centered on a large basin for full immersion, became a model for others throughout Italy. It even inspired an iconic motif of illuminated manuscripts known as the fountain of life.
Seven oratories surrounded the church from the 5th century onward, and before long they were incorporated into it. The devotion of visiting them, kept up through the Middle Ages, gave rise to the similar devotion of the seven altars. That practice is still common in many churches of Rome and elsewhere. The Lateran is also the oldest of the four major papal basilicas and one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome.
Pope Innocent X commissioned Francesco Borromini to renovate the interior of the church. His architectural scheme created twelve niches, and they stood empty for decades. In 1702, Pope Clement XI and Benedetto Cardinal Pamphili announced a grand plan to fill them with twelve larger-than-life sculptures of the Apostles. Saint Paul took the place of Judas Iscariot, rather than Saint Matthias.
The commission was opened to all the premier sculptors of late Baroque Rome. An illustrious prince sponsored each statue. The pope himself sponsored Saint Peter, and Cardinal Pamphili sponsored Saint John the Evangelist. Most sculptors received a sketch from Pope Clement's favorite painter, Carlo Maratta, and were expected to follow it. Pierre Le Gros the Younger successfully refused to sculpt to Maratta's design, so he was given no sketch. His statues were Saint Thomas and Saint Bartholomew. Pierre-Étienne Monnot carved Saint Paul and Saint Peter between 1704 and 1711. Camillo Rusconi finished the cycle with Saint James the Greater, completed in 1718.
Pope Clement XII later launched a competition to design a new façade. More than 23 architects entered, most of them working in the Baroque style of the day. The jury was chaired by Sebastiano Conca, president of the Roman Academy of Saint Luke, and it is described as only putatively impartial. Alessandro Galilei won. His façade, completed in 1735, removed every vestige of traditional ancient basilical architecture and gave the church a neo-classical front. The cliché assessment is that it looks like the façade of a palace, not of a church.
Galilei's front is a screen across the older front, forming a narthex, or entrance vestibule. It expresses the nave and double aisles by making the central bay wider than the others. He extended the central window with flanking columns that support its arch, in the familiar Serlian motif. He also brought the central bay forward slightly and capped it with a pediment that breaks into the roof balustrade. Paired colossal Corinthian pilasters tie the whole front together, in the manner of Michelangelo's palace on the Campidoglio.
A large Latin inscription runs across the façade. It translates as "Pope Clement XII, Pontifex Maximus, in the fifth year of his reign, dedicated this building to Christ the Savior, in honor of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist." Inside the narthex stands a 4th-century statue of the emperor Constantine. It was found elsewhere in Rome, and Clement XII ordered it moved to this site.
Six papal tombs survive inside the church. Alexander III and Sergius IV lie in the right aisles, and Clement XII lies in the left aisle. Martin V is buried in front of the confessio, Innocent III in the right transept, and Leo XIII in the left transept. Leo XIII was, for over a century, the last pope not entombed in Saint Peter's Basilica. That changed with Pope Francis, who died in 2025 and is buried at Santa Maria Maggiore.
Twelve more papal tombs were built here starting in the 10th century, but both great fires destroyed them. The charred remains were gathered and reburied in a polyandrion. Among the popes concerned were Paschal II, Callixtus II and Honorius II. Pope John X, who reigned from 914 to 928, was the first pope buried within the walls of Rome. He received a prominent burial because of rumors that Theodora had him murdered during the period known as the saeculum obscurum.
The skull of Saint Peter is claimed to rest in the church, and has been since at least the ninth century. The skull of Saint Paul is said to lie alongside it.
The red marble throne on which popes once sat is now in the Vatican Museums. It was one of a pair, and the other was plundered by Napoleon and now sits in the Louvre. Another papal throne, the sedia stercoraria, stands in the Lateran cloister. Its unsavory name comes from an anthem once sung at papal coronations, "De stercore erigens pauperem," meaning "lifting up the poor out of the dunghill," from Psalm 112.
The cloister itself dates from the 13th century. Its columns of inlaid marble are the work of Vassellectus and the Cosmati, in a style between the Romanesque and the Gothic. The graceful ciborium over the high altar dates from 1369, and the medieval Cosmatesque pavement also survives. Outdoors, an apse lined with mosaics and open to the air preserves the memory of the Triclinium of Pope Leo III, the state banqueting hall of the old palace. In its central scene, Peter gives the papal stole to Leo III and a standard to Charlemagne.
During the Second World War, under Pope Pius XII, the Lateran and its related buildings served as a safe haven from the Nazis and Italian Fascists. Jews and other refugees found shelter there. Among them were Meuccio Ruini, Alcide De Gasperi and Pietro Nenni. The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, with sixty orphan refugees in their care, had been ordered to leave their convent on the Via Carlo Emanuele. The Sisters of Maria Bambina, who staffed the kitchen at the Pontifical Major Roman Seminary at the Lateran, offered a wing of their convent. The grounds also housed Italian soldiers.
Yad Vashem recognized Vincenzo Fagiolo and Pietro Palazzini, the seminary's vice-rector, for their efforts to assist Jews.
Around 1299, Pope Boniface VIII instituted the office of Archpriest of the church. The first on the list is Gerardo Bianchi. The line runs through centuries to Baldassare Reina, a cardinal who has held the post, and the role of Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome, since the 6th of October 2024. In 1622-1623, the Italian composer Giuseppe Olivieri served as maestro di cappella at the church.
An unusual title belongs to the president of the French Republic, currently Emmanuel Macron. He is ex officio the "First and Only Honorary Canon" of the archbasilica. The heads of state of France have held that title since King Henry IV.
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Common questions
Where is the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran located?
The Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran is in Rome, Italy, roughly 4 km from Vatican City. It lies outside Vatican City proper but has extraterritorial status from Italy under the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
Why is the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran called an archbasilica?
It is the only church in the world with the title of archbasilica. It is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome and holds the seat of the pope as bishop of Rome.
When was the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran founded?
The Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran was dedicated in 324 by Pope Sylvester I. That makes it the oldest public church in Rome and the oldest basilica in the Western world.
Where does the name Lateran in Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran come from?
The name Laterano comes from the Laterani, an ancient Roman family whose palace grounds occupied the site. Sextius Lateranus, the first plebeian consul, belonged to this family.
Who designed the facade of the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran?
Alessandro Galilei designed the facade, which was completed in 1735 under Pope Clement XII. He won a competition that drew more than 23 architects.
Why did the popes stop living at the Lateran Palace next to the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran?
Pope Clement V moved the papacy to Avignon in 1309, and the Lateran buildings deteriorated after fires. When the papacy returned, the damage left them inadequate, and the popes eventually settled at the Vatican.
What is the Lateran Obelisk near the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran?
The Lateran Obelisk is the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world, weighing an estimated 455 tons. Pope Sixtus V had it re-erected on the 3rd of August 1588.
All sources
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