San Giovanni in Oleo (church building) built

401 CE.

Shown on the map at 41.877°, 12.502°.

San Giovanni in Oleo is a chapel adjacent to the church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina in Rome. It commemorates the place where, according to legend, in 92 AD, at the hands of the emperor Domitian, the apostle John was immersed in a vat of boiling oil from which he emerged unharmed. Tradition relates that, having failed to execute the apostle, Domitian exiled him to the island of Patmos where John wrote the biblical Book of Revelation. It is supposed that John later died and was buried in Ephesus where a large basilica was built to house his relics. He is the only one of the Twelve Disciples to have been spared from martyrdom. Although the current building is not ancient, the small centralized form - customarily employed by the Romans for martyria, mausolea and other memorial purposes - may have been inspired by an earlier structure. Documentary sources seem to indicate that San Giovanni a Porta Latina was in existence by the end of the 5th century. The present octagonal chapel was built circa 1509. The design was commonly ascribed to the architect Donato Bramante, although it is now thought to have been the work either of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger or Baldassare Peruzzi.

Text from the Wikipedia article San Giovanni in Oleo, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Everything else in 401 CE

HistoryLayer draws the world as it was in any year from 123,000 BCE to 2026. Move the slider and the borders redraw for that year; the map carries 23,890 events, 12,790 people, 837 wars and 13,183 cities, each one readable in place. Signing in is optional and lets you keep what you find.

HistoryLayer
1914CE
World Wars
123,000 BCE2026 CE
54 stops — one per surviving map on file, evenly spaced drag the pin · ←→ steps one stop the same 54 stops by true elapsed time ↑
Map & filters
Show on the map
Filter
Colour by
Polity Empire