Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome

As the home of the Pope and the Catholic Curia, as well as the locus of many sites and relics of veneration related to apostles, saints and Christian martyrs, Rome had long been a destination for pilgrims.

[1] The tradition of visiting all seven churches was started by Philip Neri[2] around 1553 in order to combine conviviality and the sharing of a common religious experience through discovering of the heritage of the early Saints.

Neri drew up an itinerary that included visits to St. Peter's Basilica, then St. Paul Outside-the-Walls, St. Sebastian's, St. John Lateran, Holy Cross-in-Jerusalem, St. Lawrence-Outside-the Walls and finally St. Mary Major.

[1] Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love was added by Pope John Paul II for the Great Jubilee of 2000, replacing St. Sebastian Outside-the-Walls.

A periplus was a manuscript listing ports and coastal landmarks, in order and with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore.

While these continued to have importance, by the 18th century, the storied history as well as its treasures of Italian art, also drew cultural pilgrims on a Grand Tour of Europe that almost always included Rome.