Santa Caterina della Rota is in the piazza named after it off the Via Guilia, where there are two other churches. This is part of the rione Regola. The postal address is Via di San Girolamo della Carità 80. Pictures of the church on Wikimedia Commons. [1]

It is administered by the Confraternity of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri, and is open for Mass on Sundays at 10:30 (September 2010). It is not usually otherwise open.

HistoryEdit

This is thought to be one of the oldest churches in the area, and was at first dedicated to Santa Maria in Catarina. It has this name in a papal bull of 1186, where it is described as a parish church. The name "Catarina" originally meant "chains", and the legend is that Christian captives who had been ransomed from Muslim pirates used to be accommodated in a hospice adjacent. They allegedly hung their chains in the church in thanksgiving. With time the meaning was forgotten, and the church was called Sante Maria e Caterina (Mary and Catherine) and finally simply Santa Caterina after the martyr of Alexandria in Egypt. In the 16th century it was rebuilt to a design by Ottaviano Mascherino, and formally rededicated to her. The "rota" suffix refers to the spiked Catherine wheel on which she was tortured, according to her legend. The Chapter of St Peter's paid for a restoration at the end of the 19th century, when the ceiling from San Francesco d’Assisi a Regola was inserted, and the Confraternity took over the church in 1929.

ExteriorEdit

The façade was designed by Luigi Poletti, and added in 1730. It is now an unusual example of a neglected and dirty church frontage in the Centro Storico, with the stonework of the architectural details flaking and the orange rendering peeling off. The lintel of the door has an inscription proclaiming the ownership of the Confraternity, and above this is a segmental pediment with the top broken. Above this is a rectangular window framed in narrow relief with Baroque curlicues to either side at the top, and this is surmounted by a carved bust in a oddly-shaped frame (reminiscent of a draped sheepskin) below a cornice with an ogee curve. There is a pair of rectangular pilasters on each side of the door, with high plinths and with the inner two being doubled in relief. These have interesting capitals, with Ionic volutes reversed so that they point inwards and connected by swags. The pilasters are continued above the capitals to a strongly projecting cornice at the level of the portrait bust. Dumpy Doric pilasters rise from this to support the triangular pediment, which has a recessed central section with stepped breaks. There are damaged finials crowning this.

InteriorEdit

The interior has a single nave with three chapels on either side. It contains a memorial to Giuseppe Vasi the engraver, who left many depictions of Roman churches in the 18th century. The finely carved wooden ceiling is from the demolished chapel of San Francisco d'Assisi a Regola after it was pulled down for the Tiber embankment, and dates from the 16th century. The first chapel on the right has a painting by Girolamo Muziano depicting the Flight into Egypt, and the last on the left has an Annunciation of the Tuscan-Roman school of the 16th century. The statue of Our Lady with St Anne was originally used in processions invoking divine assistance for pregnant women (the so-called "Processioni delle Panze").

External linksEdit

Official diocesan web-page

Italian Wikipedia page

Caterina alla Ruota Photos