045.

Chiesa di S. Pietro in Vinculis

St. Peter in Chains (3) gets its name from the fact that it houses the shackles traditionally recognized as being the ones with which that saint was restrained in Jerusalem and recovered at the time of the eastern emperor Theodosius II (408-450 AD) and miraculously joined to those with which he was imprisoned in Rome (see Plate 42). Little remains of the early Christian church except the unusual set of matched spolia columns used for the nave. In the print we see the portico which was added in 1477 flanked by a cardinal’s palace (4) on the left and on the right by the monastery (3) which was replaced by the engineering school of the University of Rome in the late 19th century. The street to the left which leads to S. Martino ai Monti, Plate 124A, is the Via delle Sette Sale (2) which follows the northern edge of the Oppian spur of the Esquiline hill. At lower left, with a carriage climbing it, we see the continuation of this street toward the Roman Forum, blocked in the 1890s. To the left of this important axis is the former Palazzo Borgia, which by Vasi's time had been taken over by the adjoining church of S. Francesco di Paola (1).