San Giorgio al Velabro

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The church of San Giorgio al Velabro.

San Giorgio al Velabro is a basilica church in Rome, devoted to St. George and located on the ancient Roman Velabrum, near the Arch of Janus, in the rione of Ripa.

The ancient Arcus Argentariorum is incorporated into the church's front facade.

[edit] History

The first religious building attested in the place of the current basilica is a diaconia, funded by Pope Gregory the Great.

The current basilica was built during the 7th century, possibly by Pope Leo II, who dedicated it to Saint Sebastian. A 482 inscription in the catacombs of St. Callixtus probably refers of a church in the same zone. Its plan is hardly regular, the building having frequently been added to and rebuilt.

The basilica was inside the Greek quarter of Rome, where Greek-speaking merchants, civil and military officers and monks of the Byzantine Empire lived — the nearby Santa Maria in Cosmedin, for example, was known as in Schola Graeca at the time. Pope Zachary (741-752), who was of Greek origin, moved the relic of St. George to this basilica from Cappadocia, so that this saint had a basilica dedicated in the West well before the spreading of his worship with the return of the Crusaders from the East.

After a restoration of Pope Gregory IV (9th century), the basilica received the addition of the portico and of the tower bell in the first half of the 13th century. The apsis was decorated with frescoes by Pietro Cavallini in the 13th century.

Between 1923 and 1926, the Superintendent of Monuments of Rome, Antonio Munoz, completed a more radical restoration programme, with the aim of restoring the building's "medieval character" and freeing it from later additions. This was done by returning the floor to its original level (and so exposing the column bases) reopening the ancient windows that gave light to the central nave, restoring the apsis, and generally removing numerous accretions from the other most recent restorations. During this process, fragments (now displayed on the basilica's internal walls) were found indicating a schola cantorum on the site, attributed to the period of Gregory IV.

The building as we see it today is largely a product of the 1920s restoration. However, five years' further restoration followed the explosion of a car bomb, parked close to the Basilica's facade, at midnight on 27 July 1993. That explosion caused no fatalities but left the 12th century portico almost totally collapsed and blew a large opening into the wall of the main Basilica, as well as doing serious damage to the residence of the Generalate of the Crosiers (Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross) next door. The Ministry of Cultural Heritage researched and catalogued what was damaged or destroyed, placing the fragments in 1050 crates with dates and locational references before restoring the building with them, although some details, particularly in the portico, were deliberately left unrestored as a memorial to the bombing.

The Cardinal Deacon of the Titulus S. Georgii in Velabro is Alfons Maria Stickler. Among the previous titulars, John Henry Newman.