Santi Sergio e Bacco al Foro Romano

Located in the ruins of the Roman Forum, it had been one of the ancient diaconiae of the city and a collect church for one of the station days of Lent, but it was demolished in the sixteenth century.

[1] Lanciani further points out that Santi Sergio e Bacco was the only church in the Roman Forum that "did not occupy the site of an ancient building, but stood in its own ground.

"[1] Before its destruction the church served as the ecclesia collecta for Tuesday of the third week of Lent, meaning that it was the meeting point for the papal procession that then moved to the day's station, Santa Pudenziana.

One of the libri pontificales records that the Syrian Pope Gregory III (731–741) had performed a major expansion of the church in the early 700s, which had been up until then a small oratory.

[2] (In 1190, Innocent, as Lotario di Segni, had inherited the church as his cardinal deaconry and donated a basilica shrine, a silver chalice, and altar vestments to it.

Whatever the reason for its destruction, it was certainly gone by the end of the 16th century, when its incomes were transferred into a prebend for a simple canonry of eighty crowns in the chapel of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in the nearby church of Sant'Adriano al Foro (now deconsecrated and despoiled, remains only visible as the Curia Julia).

A sketch of the church from Lanciani's Ruins and excavations of ancient Rome (1897), showing the church's position between the columns of the Temple of Vespasian. [ 1 ]
Pope Innocent III served as Cardinal Deacon of the church before his election as pope in 1198, endowing the church with gifts and performing renovations both before and during his pontificate.