Travel to Italy: Rome: More Churches: Photo 43

Set in the floor and easy to overlook is this rota or wheel, perhaps a disc cut from a porphyry column. It is a remnant of the four "wheels" in the floor of Old St. Peter's, the basilica begun by Constantine and demolished after 1500 to make room for the new church. There is a similar "wheel" in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, and the idea of these stones seems to have been imported from there. At the old St. Peter's, these discs marked the proper spot for prostrations. The surrounding curlicues are--surprise!--the work of Bernini and are a reminder that this stone, unlike the other three, somehow survived to be put in place here only in the 17th century.

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