"Il y a peu de scènes dans l'histoire plus émouvantes que celle-là, et elle ne perd rien à la décoration du théâtre; en se plaçant sur un tertre à quatre milles de Rome, près de la voie Latine, dans un lieu où il n'y a aujourd'hui que des tombeaux et des ruines, on peut se figurer le camp des Volsques, dont les armes et les tentes étincellent au soleil. Les montagnes s'élèvent à l'horizon. A travers la plaine ardente et poudreuse défile une foule voilée dont les gémissements retentissent dans le silence de la campagne romaine. Bientôt Coriolan est entouré de cette multitude suppliante dont les plaintes, les cris, devaient avoir la vivacité des démonstrations passionées des Romaines de nos jours. Coriolan eût ré sisté à tout ce bruit, il eût peut-être résisté aux larmes de sa femme et aux caresses de ses enfants; il ne résista pas à la sévérité de sa mère.
"Le soir, par un glorieux coucher du soleil de Rome qui éclaire leur joie, la procession triomphante s'éloigne en adressant un chant de reconnaissance aux dieux, et lui se retire dans sa tente, étonné d'avoir pu céder."—Ampère, Hist. Rom. ii. 402.
The return drive to Rome may be varied by turning to the right about a mile beyond this, into a lane which leads past the so-called temple of Bacchus to the Via Appia Vecchia.
We may now follow the lines of white mulberry-trees across the open space in front of St. John Lateran, which is a continuation of the ancient papal promenade of "the Mirror," to Sta. Croce. The sister basilicas look at each other, and at Sta. Maria Maggiore, down avenues of trees. On the left are the walls of Rome, upon which run the arches of the Aqua Marcia.
"Few Roman churches are set within so impressive a picture as Santa Croce, approached on every side through these solitudes of vineyards and gardens, quiet roads, and long avenues of trees, that occupy such immense extent within the walls of Rome. The scene from the Lateran, looking towards this basilica across the level common, between lines of trees, with the distance of Campagna and mountains, the castellated walls, the arcades of the Claudian aqueduct, amid gardens and groves, is more than beautiful, full of memory and association. The other approach, by the unfrequented Via di Sta. Croce, presents the finest distances, seen through a foliage beyond the dusky towers of the Honorian walls, and a wide extent of slopes covered with vineyards, amid which stand at intervals some of those forlorn cottage farms, grey and dilapidated, that form characteristic features in Roman scenery. The majestic ruins of Minerva-Medica, the so-called temple of Venus and Cupid, the fragments of the Baths of St. Helena, the Castrense Amphitheatre, the arches of the aqueduct, half concealed in cypress and ivy, are objects which must increase the attractions of a walk to this sanctuary of the cross. But the exterior of the church is disappointing and inappropriate, retaining nothing antique except the square Lombardic tower of the twelfth century, in storeys of narrow-arched windows, its brickwork ornamented with disks of coloured marble, and a canopy, with columns, near the summit, for a statue no longer in its place."—Hemans' Catholic Italy, vol. i.
The site of the Basilica of Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme was once occupied by the garden of Heliogabalus, and afterwards by the palace of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, whose residence here was known as the Palatium Sessorianum, whence the name of Sessorian, sometimes given to the basilica.
The church was probably once a hall in the palace of Helena, to which an apse was added by Constantine, in whose reign it was consecrated by Pope Sylvester. It was repaired by Gregory II. early in the eighth century; the monastery was added by Benedict VII. about 975, and the whole was rebuilt by Lucius II. in 1144. The church was completely modernized by Benedict XIV. in the last century, and scarcely anything, except the tower, now remains externally, which is even as old as the twelfth century. The fine columns of granite and bigio-lumachellato, which now adorn the façade, were plundered from the neighbouring temple in 1744.
The interior of the church is devoid of beauty, owing to modernizations. Four out of twelve fine granite columns, which divided its nave and aisles, are boxed up in senseless plaster piers. The high altar is adorned with an urn of green basalt, sculptured with lions' heads, which contains the bodies of SS. Anastasius and Cæsarius. Two of the pillars of the baldacchino are of breccia-corallina. The fine frescoes of the tribune by Pinturicchio have been much retouched. They were executed under Alexander VI., on a commission from Cardinal Carvajal, who is himself represented as kneeling before the cross, which is held by the Empress Helena.
"The very important frescoes of the choir apsis of Sta. Croce (now much over-painted) are of Pinturicchio's better time. They represent the finding of the Cross, with a colossal Christ in a nimbus among angels above,—a figure full of wild grandeur."—Kugler.