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Should the opportunity arise, don’t miss seeing the basilica’s cavernous interior when all the lights are on – only then can you fully appreciate this giant jewel-box of colour (see Features of St Peter’s Basilica).

Legend recounts that on this spot, where a magnificent oak grew, Nero died and was buried. The site was thought cursed, but in 1099, in a vision, the Virgin told Pope Paschal II to fell the oak, dig up the evil emperor’s bones and build a chapel.

This unpretentious yet compelling church provides a concise Roman history lesson in one concentrated location.

One of Rome’s greatest basilicas, this richly decorated church dates from the 5th century, as do its earliest mosaics, full of Byzantine splendour. The 16th-century Cappella Sistina’s rare marbles were “quarried”, in typical papal fashion, by destroying an ancient wonder – in this case, the Palatine’s Septizonium, a tower erected by Septimius Severus in AD 203.

Built over an ancient temple of wisdom, this is Rome’s only Florentine Gothic church, built around 1280. In the 16th century it was the stronghold of the Inquisition in Rome. Among its great art is Michelangelo’s Risen Christ , created nude but now sporting a skewed, gilt-bronze loincloth. The body of St Catherine of Siena, who convinced the papacy to return from France in 1377, reclines under the altar.

The “Mother of All Churches”, the cathedral of Rome’s bishopric was founded by Constantine in the 4th century. It was the chief papal residence until 1309, and popes were crowned here up until the 19th century. Its most recent renovation was ordered in 1650, explaining the present-day Baroque bombast, with mammoth saints gesturing and gyrating. The remarkable cloisters are 13th-century Cosmatesque.

This is probably Rome’s oldest church and certainly one of the most intimate and charming. Dating from the time of Pope Calixtus I (AD 217– 222), it was an early centre of Marian devotion and is Rome’s only medieval church that has not been transmogrified by either decay or enthusiastic Baroque renovators. Legend claims it was founded on a spot where olive oil miraculously sprang forth on the day of Christ’s birth.

The national church of France in Italy really has only one star turn, but it is a priceless one at that – Caravaggio’s famous trio of enormous paintings in the Chapel of St Matthew (see Caravaggio’s Calling of St Matthew). The central oil on canvas, St Matthew and the Angel , is the second version. The first was rejected by the church because the saint was shown with dirty feet – and, some say, because his relationship with the young angel seemed inappropriately intimate (see San Luigi dei Francesi).

Despite its rather soulless 19th-century reconstruction following a fire, the grandeur of this 4th-century basilica can still impress. Some restored 5th-century and 12th- and 13th-century mosaics survive, along with the original 11th-century bronze door and a grand Paschal candlestick. Fortunately the cloisters of inlaid double columns (1214), considered the most beautiful in Rome, escaped the flames.

Most visitors seek out this church as the setting of the first act of Puccini’s opera Tosca , but the Counter-Reformation giant is also important in its own right. It has the city’s second-largest dome, a flamboyant Baroque façade and some wonderful frescoes by Domenichino inside.