Santa Prassede

A 9th-century basilica with the most spectacular Byzantine-style mosaics in Rome — gold backgrounds, rigid stylised figures, and hieratic poses, all created for Pope Paschal I (817-824) by mosaicists imported from Byzantium during a wave of iconoclasm there. The Chapel of Saint Zeno — known since the Middle Ages as the 'Garden of Paradise' — is entirely covered with 9th-century mosaics, the most extensive Byzantine-style mosaic decoration anywhere in Rome. The basilica also holds what is venerated as a piece of the column from the Flagellation of Christ. Steps from Santa Maria Maggiore but rarely crowded.