The church of San Silvestro is a place of worship in Tivoli with a very long history: tradition attributes its building to Pope Simplicius, in the second half of the fifth century. Originally it resembled the church of San Pietro alla Carità, with three naves divided by twelve columns of cipollino marble.
What to see
In the seventeenth century the side aisles were demolished for town-planning reasons: the left one to widen via del Colle, the right one to build the parish house. In 1767 the columns were sold to meet the church's financial needs and the floor was raised, leaving the original Cosmatesque paving only near the presbytery. Already in the second half of the sixteenth century Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este had the square bell tower reduced to a bell-cote. The restorations of the Soprintendenza between 1909 and 1919 brought the Romanesque architecture and most of the paintings back to light. The Romanesque brick façade has a portal with marble jambs and lintel, three single-light windows and a pediment on small marble corbels; the interior has a single nave with a timber truss roof, and beneath the presbytery lies a crypt with a large central column, visible from the nave through a fenestella confessionis.
The apse is entirely frescoed, with paintings probably from the early thirteenth century, found in 1911 and ten metres high. In the conch is the Traditio legis: Christ, crowned by God the Father, hands over the scroll of the law between Paul and Peter, on the bank of the Jordan between two palm trees, on one of which sits a phoenix. Below are the twelve lambs turned towards the central lamb, then the Madonna and Child between the two Saints John, Kings David and Solomon and ten prophets. The stories of Constantine show the leprous emperor renouncing a bath in children's blood, his baptism by Pope Sylvester, the dispute between Jews and Christians and the saint binding the jaws of a dragon. On the triumphal arch are Christ Pantocrator with the evangelists, the seven candlesticks and the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse.
Visiting
The church is in Tivoli, on via del Colle. Opening hours should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
According to the sources, the apse cycle had a precise political meaning: in the twelfth century the church stood in a newly developing part of town, and its images were meant to assert the supremacy of the papacy over the empire, then competing for control of the territory.
