Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Lonely Planet review

The last resting place of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, this much-altered basilica stands on the site of an earlier 5th-century church, itself built over the house where St Cecilia lived and died in 230. Like many Christian saints, Cecilia came to a sticky end. Her executioners first tried to scald her to death by locking her in the caldarium of the baths in her own house.

She emerged unscathed and was then beheaded, but the executioner did such a bad job that she took three days to die. Legend has it that she sang as she was dying; for this reason she became the patron saint of music and musicians. When her tomb was opened in 1599, the body was miraculously intact, enabling Stefano Maderno to use it as a model for his delicate statue beneath the altar.

In the right-hand nave the Cappella del Caldarium marks the spot where the saint was allegedly tortured. It's the spectacular 13th-century fresco in the nun's choir that's the church's artistic glory. Although there are only fragments remaining, you can see enough of Pietro Cavallini's Giudizio Universale (Last Judgement) to realise what an outstanding work it must once have been.

Beneath the church, via the elaborately decorated crypt you can visit the excavations of several Roman houses, one of which might have belonged to St Cecilia.