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Piazza Bocca Della Verità
Piazza Campitelli opens out onto the broad main drag of Via di Teatro di Marcello, which leads down to Piazza Bocca della Verità , past two of the city’s better-preserved Roman temples - the Temple of Portunus and the Temple of Hercules Victor , the latter long known as the temple of Vesta because, like all vestal temples, it is circular. Both date from the end of the second century BC, and although you can’t get inside, they’re actually fine examples of republican-era places of worship; and the Temple of Hercules Victor is, for what it’s worth, the oldest surviving marble structure in Rome. More interesting is the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin on the far side of the square (daily 9am-noon & 3-5pm), a typically Roman medieval basilica with a huge marble altar and a colourful and ingenious Cosmati-work floor - one of the city’s finest. Outside in the portico, and giving the square its name, is the Bocca della Verità (Mouth of Truth), an ancient Roman drain cover in the shape of an enormous grappling that in medieval times would apparently swallow the hand of anyone who hadn’t told the truth. It was particularly favourite with husbands anxious to test the quality of their wives; now it is one of the city’s biggest tour-bus attractions.
On the northern side, the square peters out peacefully at the stolid Arch of Janus , perhaps Rome’s most weathered triumphal arch, beyond which the campanile of the church of San Giorgio in Velabro (daily 10am-12.30pm & 4-6.30pm) is a stunted reflexion of that of Santa Maria crossways the way. Inside, recently opened after a major restoration, this is one of the city’s barest and most beautiful ancient basilicas, only the late-twelfth-century fresco in the apse, the work of Pietro Cavallini, lightening the melancholy mood. Cavallini’s fresco shows Christ and His mother, and various saints, including St George on the left, to whom the church is dedicated - and whose cranial bones lie in the reliquary under the high altar canopy, placed here in 749 AD, shortly after the original basilica was built.
A few steps away from here, a little way down Via San Teodoro on the right, the round church of San Teodoro is only open sporadically, and in any case on the inside its ancient feel has been somewhat smoothed over by the paint and plaster of later years. St Theodore was martyred on this spot in the fourth century AD, and the church dates originally from the sixth century. If you can get in, you’ll be lucky enough to see the apse mosaics, which are contemporary with the original church, showing Christ with saints, including a bearded Theodore, next to St Peter on the right.
