Rome Baptist Church

In 1874, James Wall, an English Baptist missionary, purchased – on behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society of London – the inner courtyard of a small building in Piazza in Lucina to provide a permanent and suitable home for the community he had founded three years earlier, which, until then, had been meeting in the courtyard of a building on Via Laurina, near Piazza del Popolo.

The architect Giovanni Carlo Landi was commissioned to transform this irregular space – part of the complex of courtyards belonging to Palazzo Ruspoli and formerly used as a stable – into a place of worship, which was completed and opened the following year; in 1888, the congregation purchased part of the small building, which had been obtained in 1729–1731 by Camillo Paladini by joining together two early 18th-century houses. Between 1914 and 1915, Paolo Paschetto created the interior paintings, featuring lunettes along the side walls bearing the text of the Lord’s Prayer and, at the centre of the central one, a crowned cross inscribed within a mandorla and surrounded by wings, between the Α and Ω. In 1935, the church was abandoned and, during the Second World War, was used as a warehouse.

In 1962, William C. Ruchti of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention acquired the building and established a new congregation (Rome Baptist Church), which officially began operating on 10 March 1963; on that occasion, the building was renovated, and Paschetto’s paintings were lost. In September 2000, the church became independent and self-supporting.

Externally, the church lacks any distinctive features apart from the entrance door, which leads into a long passage: framed by two Ionic pilasters in travertine and surmounted by a balcony supported by two corbels, on whose parapet are depicted the Greek letters A and Ω and, in the centre, between two palm branches, a carved open book with a quotation from the Epistle to the Romans (‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes’, 1:16). This was added later, probably in 1901, by Eugenio Aureli and Gaetano Marchesi, who, in that same year, carried out similar work on the façade of the Evangelical Baptist Church in Trastevere.

The hall is accessed through a portal with double wooden doors carved with Art Nouveau motifs depicting grapevines intertwining the letters A and Ω; together with the baptismal font, this is the only surviving element of the original furnishings, which have since been lost. The space is L-shaped and has been regularised by means of small columns and pillars supporting the ceiling, creating a layout with two aisles: the main nave, aligned with the entrance and covered by a barrel vault featuring two longitudinal skylights, and the side aisle, to the left of the main one, whose first bay forms a sort of vast ambulatory. The walls are articulated by Tuscan pilasters and, in the centre of the rear wall, stands the pipe organ, built by the Strozzi company in the second half of the 20th century and featuring 21 stops; on either side of the entrance door is a plaque dating from 1903 commemorating the founder, James Wall. Along the final bay of the side aisle is the nineteenth-century baptismal font, with a marble basin for immersion.

Photo Turismo Roma