Overview
The church was built by Paschal I in the early 9th century on the site of the house of the husband of the saint, who was martyred under Marcus Aurelius. It was refurbished in the 1700s, when the interior was redesigned and the façade on the courtyard was built, although the mosaic frieze on the portico and the bell tower date back to the 12th XII. At the beginning of the right-hand nave, a corridor frescoed by Paul Brill gives access to the caldarium, in which you can see the ancient thermal pipes, where the saint was exposed to the steam for three days before her torture. The Gothic ciborium signed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1293 stands out in the presbytery, under the high altar is the statue of St. Cecilia by Stefano Maderno (1600), who portrayed her body as it was found in the tomb in 1599, while in the basin of the apse you can see a large mosaic from about 820. A staircase leads to the nuns' choir, adjacent to a counter-façade, frescoed between 1289 and 1293 by Pietro Cavallini with an extraordinary Last Judgment: rediscovered in 1900, it is the most significant example of pre-Giottesque painting. The excavations of the domus and the crypt can be seen in the area underground.
