"St. Nicholas Incarcerated"

I know, I know: funny name for a church, huh? Perhaps an even funnier name for a saint. I am not sure if this is the same St. Nicholas (San Nicola, Santa Claus...) whose feast we celebrate on December 6, but in any case this particular St. Nicholas is the patron saint of prisoners. So the Italian name - San Nicola in Carcere - literally means St. Nicholas in Chains. However, it's more fun to say St. Nicholas Incarcerated.

The church itself is quite interesting. Before it was built, there were three pagan temples which stood side by side at this place. It seems that they even shared walls, just as adjacent rooms in a house share a common wall. Anyhow, the temples are no more, but the church of St. Nicholas was built where the middle temple was, so it incorporates into its own walls some of the great pillars from the walls that supported the ancient temples. You can see this from the outside in the photo below.

I have a small bit of history with this church. My first year in Rome, I came here for the Station Mass during Lent, and after Mass we had the opportunity to explore the excavated area underneath the church for a few minutes. I was with another seminarian, exploring one of the furthest corners of the excavation (where it looked, in fact, like the excavation was still going on), when suddenly the lights went out and we found ourselves in absolute darkness in the midst of an archeological dig site.

It was quite an adventure to find our way out, led by the light of an indiglo watch, but we made it without any major injuries or twisted ankles (which is remarkable, considering the rubble that we had to climb over on the way out!). The picture below shows the entrance to the excavated site. As you can see, the entrance is right in front of the main altar. When this other seminarian and I finally found our way out of the "basement" and made our way up the stairs into the main body of the church, we also found ourselves right in the middle of the next Mass that had been scheduled that morning! We were a bit embarrassed, and scooted to the doors of the church without much delay!