ARCHITECT, Italian
(active early 4th century in Rome)

Exterior view

300-20
Photo
Basilica di Santi Cosma e Damiano, Rome

The basilica of Sts Cosmas and Damian is a church in the Roman Forum, parts of which incorporate original Roman buildings. The circular building at the entrance onto the Forum (not used today) was built in the early 4th century as a Roman temple, thought to have been dedicated to Valerius Romulus, deified son of the emperor Maxentius. The main building was perhaps the library of an imperial forum.

The temple was Christianised and dedicated to Sts Cosmas and Damian in 527, when Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, and his daughter Amalasuntha donated the library of the Forum of Peace (Bibliotheca Pacis) and a portion of the Temple of Romulus to Pope Felix IV. The pope united the two buildings to create a basilica devoted to the Greek brothers and saints, Cosmas and Damian, in contrast with the ancient pagan cult of the two brothers Castor and Pollux, who had been worshipped in the nearby Temple of Castor and Pollux. The apse was decorated with a Roman-Byzantine mosaic, representing a parousia, the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time.

View the ground plan of the building.