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Updated: June 18, 2025
Its main interest for us to-day lies in the beauty of its columns of bigio antico, cipollino, porphyry, granite, and other marbles belonging to the original church, with their Roman and Byzantine capitals. Also to the right of the nave we see a curious ambone hollowed out of a fragment of a gigantic column of Greek marble.
Heraclius brought it from Alexandria to Constantinople about 630, and between 1520 and 1534 it was behind the high-altar of S. Mark's. In the latter year it was moved into the baptistery on to the altar, where it stayed till taken into the treasury. It is made of Oriental cipollino. The medallion at the top is cemented on.
Nothing, however, is left of the old church, which was entirely rebuilt in 1683, except the apse as it is seen from the outside, the round campanile in its first story and the beautiful columns sixteen in number, four of bigio antico, two of pavonazzetto, one of cipollino, and the rest of greco venato, according to Dr. Ricci.
One remarkably fine variety called Cipollino marino is distinguished by its minute curling veins of light green on a ground of clear white.
This is a noble basilica, grandly proportioned, the nave and aisles of which are separated by monolith pillars, mostly of gray granite, and some few of cipollino and other marbles, the spoils, no doubt, of the ancient Panormus. Above the cornice the walls are entirely sheeted with golden mosaics, representing, as usual, Scripture history.
Probably this lantern was one of the enrichments added to the church by Bishop Durando who died in 1283, for the capitals of the west door look considerably later. This door is built entirely of white marble with shafts which look, as do those of the south transept door, almost like Cipollino, taken perhaps from some Roman building.
It would be tempting to indulge in rhetoric and to dwell upon the magnificence of some of the more luxurious houses of the wealthy Romans; to describe their ostentation of rich marbles in pillar, wall, or floor the white marbles of Carrara, Paros, and Hymettus; the Phrygian marble or "pavonazzetto" its streakings of crimson or violet; the orange-golden glow of the Numidian stone of "giallo antico"; the Carystian marble or "cipollino" with its onion-like layers of white and pale-green; the serpentine variety from Laconia, and the porphyry from Egypt.
First one found the Christian Church quietly, audaciously quartering itself in a pagan church, as, for instance, San Lorenzo in Miranda installed in the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, and retaining the latter's rare porticus in cipollino marble and its handsome white marble entablature.
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