Overview
The church on the corner of Piazza Vittorio and Via Napoleone III is one of the historic Roman sites of the blessing of animals held on 17 January. The celebration is very popular and attracts dozens of believers, who attend with dogs, cats and canaries, as well as curious onlookers and tourists who can take advantage of the free guided tours promoted by the parish.
Despite its 18th-century façade, the Church of Sant'Eusebio all'Esquilino is among the oldest in Rome, mentioned as early as the 5th century. The interior retains its Romanesque layout and a sober 18th-century white and gold stucco decoration. The most precious work is the fresco in the vault of the nave, depicting the Glory of Saint Eusebius and painted in 1757 by the Bohemian artist Anton Raphael Mengs. This fresco plays a crucial role in the transition from the Baroque to the new neoclassicist aesthetic theories that were gaining ground at the time, in the wake of the studies and discoveries of the archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the founding father of modern archaeology and a friend of Mengs. A recent restoration has brought to light numerous details of the work, including the complex layering of figures struck by the central beam of light.
