Santa Maria in Cosmedin and the Bocca della Verità

The draw

The famous mouth is a drain cover, and the church behind it is the better thing. The Bocca della Verità is a 1,300 kg Roman marble mask, probably of the sea god Oceanus, probably a drain cover from the Temple of Hercules Victor next door. Behind it stands a sixth-century diaconia that still serves Rome's Melkite Greek Catholic community in the Eastern rite, on the site of the Forum Boarium — with an ancient tufa platform under its crypt that may be the Great Altar of Hercules.

The problem when visiting

The queue is for the portico, and it can be long. Roman Holiday put the Bocca in front of a global audience in 1953 and the line has never really gone away. It closes at 17.50, earlier than most Roman sights.

The tactic

Walk past the queue and go into the church. The Bocca is in the portico, so the line forms outside; the basilica behind is usually nearly empty, and it is free. Do the inside first, then join the queue — or skip it. Allow forty minutes.

Go inside, not just outside. The strangest thing about this place is that thousands of people queue at the portico every week and a large proportion never enter the sixth-century church three metres behind them. The basilica needs visitors more than the mask does.

Leave something. The church is free. The offering boxes are how a fourteen-hundred-year-old building stays open.

Respect the liturgy. This is a working Melkite Greek Catholic church, and the Sunday Divine Liturgy at 10.30 is a service, not a performance.

Keep the queue moving and do not touch what you were not invited to. The Bocca is an ancient marble carving that several thousand hands reach into every week; it is not a prop.

Dress as for any Roman church — shoulders and knees covered.

Look at the temples outside. The Temple of Hercules Victor and the Temple of Portunus stand free in the open piazza and take almost no pressure. They are two of the best-preserved Republican buildings in Rome and the crowd is twenty metres away facing the other direction.

Hours and admission

The basilica is open every day from 9.30 to 17.50, and is closed on 1 January. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated on Sundays at 10.30 — in the Eastern rite, because this is a Melkite Greek Catholic church.

Entry to the church is free.

The queue, and how to avoid most of it

The Bocca della Verità is in the portico, not the church. That is the single most useful fact here: the line forms outside, under the narthex, and the basilica behind it is usually close to empty. You can walk straight into the church without joining anything.

Whether photographing the Bocca costs anything is not published. The basilica does not say, and nor does any public authority. It is widely reported that a small contribution is expected; this page is not going to state as fact something nobody with standing has published. Carry a couple of euros in case.

Ticket & Pass Decision Matrix

Getting there

Piazza della Bocca della Verità, in the rione of Ripa, on the Tiber below the Aventine and across from Trastevere. The campanile is the landmark.

Dress and conduct

Shoulders and knees covered. It is an active church with a Sunday liturgy, and the Eastern rite is longer than the Latin one — do not walk through the middle of it.

On the ground

Allow forty minutes for the church and the portico together. Then spend ten more on the two ancient temples in the open piazza outside, which cost nothing and which most visitors walk straight past.

Early, and not at closing time. The basilica is open daily 9.30–17.50 — earlier than much of Rome, so a late-afternoon plan can fail here when it would work elsewhere.

Mornings have the shorter portico queue. The Bocca della Verità draws a steady line through the middle of the day; the first hour after opening is the thinnest it gets.

Sunday at 10.30 is the Divine Liturgy. Worth knowing either way — a reason to come if you want to hear the Eastern rite sung, and a reason to come at another hour if you do not.

Closed on 1 January.

Any season works. The church is stone and brick and indifferent to weather, and the queue is under a portico, which matters in both July sun and winter rain.