SAINT JOHN IN LATERAN’S CLOISTER

Pietro Vassalletto, a member of the famous family of Roman marble craftsmen, began to work on the reconstruction of the cloister of the Basilica of St. John in Lateran at the end of the Pontificate of Innocent III, and then continued during that of Honorius III: his son Nicholas finished it in 1232 during the Pontificate of Pope Gregory IX, as can be read in the inscription on the frieze of the portico.

The cloister, which has at its center a well known as the “Well of the Samaritan” dating back to the Carolingian period (8th-9th Century), is the largest medieval cloister in Rome, for the construction of which the Vassallettos did not recycle any ancient material.

The quadriporticus, with its Arab-Byzantine mosaic chromaticism, has five arches on each side divided by twisted, spiral, smooth or decorated with small mosaic tesserae columns. The most beautiful part of this place are the bas-reliefs above the arches that depict human masks, lion heads and leaf stems in spiral form. Below these bas-reliefs is a magnificent frieze, consisting of marble squares and rounds, which are also flanked by the figures of stars and polygons.