Santa Maria in Cosmedin and the Bocca della Verità site features

The Bocca della Verità

An ancient Roman marble mask against the left wall of the portico, weighing about 1,300 kg and probably depicting the sea titan Oceanus, with eyes, nostrils and mouth open. Historians are not certain what it was for: possibly a drain cover in the nearby Temple of Hercules Victor, which had an oculus like the Pantheon and so let rain inside; possibly a vent cattle merchants used to drain the blood of beasts sacrificed to Hercules. The medieval legend that it bites the hand of a liar is what made it famous, and Roman Holiday (1953) is what keeps the queue.

The campanile

Twelfth-century, seven storeys of arcaded brick, and the thing that identifies the church from along the Tiber.

An eighth-century church recovered in the 1890s

The interior architecture recalls the eighth century because a restoration of 1894–1899 removed the Baroque work of 1718 to get back to it. The twelfth-century furnishings stayed.

The Eastern rite, still in use

Founded to celebrate Eastern rites for a Greek-speaking population, the basilica today serves the Melkite Greek Catholic community of Rome. The Divine Liturgy is on Sundays at 10.30.

The altar of Hercules under the crypt

A platform of ancient tufa, tentatively identified as part of the Great Altar of Unconquered Hercules, possibly sixth century BCE.

The temples outside

The church sits on the Forum Boarium, and the round Temple of Hercules Victor and the rectangular Temple of Portunus stand in the open beside it — free, always visible, and usually ignored by everyone queuing for the mask.