Roma - Santa Maria in Cosmedin

A Roman Temple existed here near an ancient food wholesale-market. Over the the centuries this temple was converted into a small Christian church. When during the iconoclastic riots in Byzantium many Greeks fled to Rome, Pope Adrian I in 772 commisioned the building of the church. Greek monks decorated the church, known as "Santa Maria in Schola Graeca" at that time.

In the 18th century, the sober facade of the church was replaced by a Baroque one, that again got replaced by a (Neo-) Romanesque one, when the church got restored in 1899.

The narthex of the church houses the "Bocca della Verità", known worldwide since 1953, when in "Roman Holiday" Gregory Peck ("Joe") shocks Audrey Hepburn ("Princess Ann") by pretending to lose his hand in the Boca.