Santa Sabina is the oldest extant ecclesiastical basilica in Rome that preserves its original colonnaded rectangular plan with apse and architectural style.

It is especially well-known for its cypress wood doors carved in AD 430-432 with biblical scenes, the most famous being the first known publicly displayed depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the two thieves.

It is next to a small public park, the Giardino degli Aranci ("Garden of Oranges"), which has a scenic terrace overlooking Rome.

The church was built on the site of early Imperial houses, one of which is said to be of Sabina, a Roman matron originally from Avezzano in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

Santa Sabina was built by Peter of Illyria, a Dalmatian priest, between 422 and 432[1] near a temple of Juno on the Aventine Hill in Rome.

The Kingdom of Italy conquered Rome in 1870; expelled the Dominicans; and converted the church into a lazaretto (quarantine station for maritime travelers).

[citation needed] Italian architect and art historian Antonio Muñoz (1884-1960) restored the original simplistic medieval appearance of the church in 1914-1919.

[citation needed] The doors on the exterior of Santa Sabina are made of cypress wood, and originally had a layout of twenty-eight panels.

[7] One of the smaller top panels depicts the crucifixion of Jesus and two other figures in front of a building that alludes to the architecture of a Roman mausoleum.

The abstract vegetal designs on the panels' frames are consistent with a Mesopotamian style, suggesting the origin of at least one of the artists was from this region.

In 1265 in accordance with the injunction of the Chapter of the Roman province of the Order of Preachers at Anagni, Thomas Aquinas was assigned as regent master at the studium conventuale at Santa Sabina: “Fr.

"Prior to this time the Roman Province had offered no specialized education of any sort, no arts, no philosophy; only simple convent schools, with their basic courses in theology for resident friars, were functioning in Tuscany and the meridionale during the first several decades of the order's life.

[15] With the departure of Aquinas for Paris in 1268 and the passage of time the pedagogical activities of the studium provinciale at Santa Sabina were divided between two campuses.

A new convent of the Order at the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva had a modest beginning in 1255 as a community for women converts, but grew rapidly in size and importance after being given to the Dominicans in 1275.

Following the curriculum of studies laid out in the capitular acts of 1291 the Santa Sabina studium was redesignated as one of three studia nove logice intended to offer courses of advanced logic covering the logica nova, the Aristotelian texts recovered in the West only in the second half of the 12th century, the Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and the Prior and Second Analytics of Aristotle.

This was an advance over the logica antiqua, which treated the Isagoge of Porphyry, Divisions and Topics of Boethius, the Categories and On Interpretation of Aristotle, and the Summule logicales of Peter of Spain.

[19] In 1331 at the Santa Sabina studium Nerius de Tertia was the lector,[20] and Giovanni Zocco da Spoleto was a student of logic.