Early Christian Rome – Architecture and Imagery from Constantine to Innocent II - six online talks by Dr Hugh Doherty

Imperial capital until the late third century and home to the papacy, Rome is the city where Constantine defeated Maxentius and Saints Peter and Paul were martyred. This series of talks considers how Rome became a Christian city and examines its artistic culture between c.300 and c.1150.

The very earliest Christian art in Rome often amounted to no more than a simple sign or inscription, and its monuments were almost invisible to view – an ordinary house front, an underground burial chamber along one of the roads leading out of the city. Constantine’s granting of a legal personality to the Church in 313 changed that, accelerating change by embracing a public monumental Christian art and architecture. Early Christian meeting places were replaced with ‘titular’ community churches and huge basilicas were constructed alongside the burial places of the martyrs. The favoured shape for churches was that of the basilica – which made use of reused marble columns, capitals and pavements and which played on a well-established Roman love of colour and lustrousness in architectural interiors. Thereafter, population collapse, external pressure, and the emergence of a papal administration reshaped the city, eventually giving rise to modes of art and architecture that, from a European perspective, were seen as recognisably Roman.

They take place every Tuesday from 14th January to 18th February 2025 at 4.30pm (London) and, including Q&A, will probably last just under an hour. They are available for viewing for eight weeks after the last episode is streamed (15th April 2025).