San Giovanni in Oleo

It commemorates the place where, according to legend, in 92 AD, at the hands of the emperor Domitian, the apostle John was immersed in a vat of boiling oil from which he emerged unharmed.

Tradition relates that, having failed to execute the apostle, Domitian exiled him to the island of Patmos where John wrote the biblical Book of Revelation.

Although the current building is not ancient, the small centralized form - customarily employed by the Romans for martyria, mausolea and other memorial purposes - may have been inspired by an earlier structure.

The design was commonly ascribed to the architect Donato Bramante, although it is now thought to have been the work either of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger or Baldassare Peruzzi.

[1] On the door is the coat of arms of the French prelate Benoît Adam, with the motto "Au plaisir de Dieu".