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Greece - San Teodoro al Palatino

 

 

This church was originally built on the site of the horrea Agrippiani, the warehouses for cereals and grain which the Roman General Agrippa had constructed around 33 BC and which remarkably remained in use until the Middle Ages. An ancient sanctuary also stood on this site, which marked the famous Lupercal Cave where, legend has it, the twin brothers and founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf.

The church was dedicated to St Theodore of Amasea, a Roman legionary martyred in the East during the years of persecution under Emperor Maximian. The saint’s relics are still kept in the interior. After various structural changes over the centuries, the church was entrusted to the Archconfraternity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, founded in 1729 with the goal of suppressing blasphemy and promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In 2004 St John Paul II gave the church over to the use of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Greek Orthodox community of Rome.