Sant'Innocenzo I Papa e Guido Vescovo is a late 20th century parish church at Via Radicofani 33 in the suburb of Villa Spada (part of the Castel Giubileo suburban zone), by the Via Salaria and south of the Fidene train station.
Name[]
The dedication is an odd combination of two saints. Pope Innocent I died in 417, having witnessed the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. Bl Guy of Acqui was bishop of that town in Piedmont, 1034-70.
History[]
The parish was set up in 1981. Initially it only had the little chapel of San Cristoforo a Via di Villa Spada as a dedicated place of worship.
The church was completed in 1998, the architect being Maurzio Montani della Fargna. It is his only church in Rome.
Exterior[]
Layout[]
The church is part of a much larger parish and social complex, built as one edifice but having a complicated layout. This is located in between the Via Radicofani and the Via San Massimiliano Kolbe, with the latter street curving round the south side of the complex to join the former.
Despite the address, the complex does not have its entrance on the Via Radicofani. The major axis of the church runs parallel to this street, which is on the right hand (east) side. The church is abutted by parish facilities on both sides (west and east), and fronts a large courtyard which has its entrance to the left (west), off the Via San Massimiliano Kolbe. To the south of this is an open-air meeting place and a squat cylindrical tower, parts of the social facilities.
The entire complex stands on a ground-level storey that amounts to a very large crypt. The entrance courtyard is actually on the roof of this, with a slope up from the entrance gate.
The church proper is on a square plan.
Fabric[]
The exterior walls of the church are in red brick, and seem to be load-bearing.
The part of the complex comprising the church and its attendant parochial facilities has two horizontal white limestone stripes running all around the exterior walls. At the level of the crypt roof on the Via Radicofani side is another, lower pair of such stripes which run on around the round tower and its adjacent structures.
The roof of the church is flat, with a wide parapet on all four sides bounded by upward extensions of the exterior walls. This parapet has in its inner faces a series of windows which give concealed natural lighting for the interior.
At the bottom right hand corner of the church is a squat tower, bearing a cubical cage for the bells. This is made up of metal rods arranged in a square grid on each side and on top.
Façade[]
The church is fronted by an entrance loggia, occupying its whole width and with its own flat roof at about half the height of the church behind. The exposed church frontage is entirely in blank brick, although there is a central rectangular window at the level of the loggia roof and a white stripe at the roofline.
The frontage of the loggia melds with the near face of the campanile tower and with an ancillary building to the left. The combined frontage wall has two horizontal white stripes all the way across it, the upper stripe forming the eaves of the loggia roof. The campanile and the left hand building also have white eaves. The latter structure has five rectangular portals in between the eaves and the upper white stripe in its right hand side- these front a small enclosed roof garden.
The actual entrance into the loggia is unusual, being a large segmental portal like the arch of a low rainbow.
Interior[]
The square interior has its internal walls exactly like the exterior ones -in red brick, with two horizontal white stripes. There is also a white dado.
The side walls have deep engaged rectangular pilasters, in the same style as the walls, and these support the roof of laminated pinewood. The roof has deep square coffers separated by plank beams arranged vertically.
Unusually, the altar is of steel and features struts placed diagonally at various angles -the effect evokes the Crown of Thorns. The lectern or ambo on the left is a massive cuboidal block of white marble. The Blessed Sacrament is housed in a tall niche behind the altar, amounting to a square apse with a skylight.
Liturgy[]
Mass is celebrated, according to the Diocese (May 2019):
Weekdays 18:00 (19:00 in summer);
Sundays and Solemnities 8:30, 10:00, 11:30.
External links[]
(The parish has no website.)