San Giorgio in Acilia is a later 20th century parish church at Largo San Giorgio 4 in the suburb of San Giorgio di Acilia (named after it). This belongs to the zone of Acilia Sud, south of the Via del Mare and east of Ostia Antica.
The dedication is to St George of Lydda.
History[]
The parish was erected in 1963, and the church completed in the same year. It is the Roman headquarters of the Canossian Fathers (the Figli della Carità Canossiani).
The architect was Agostino Greggi.
Exterior[]
The church has a plan rather difficult to describe. Two irregular hexagons, in form like a pair of coffins for fat people, are placed foot to foot (so to speak). Two parallelograms with truncated acute angles are inserted into the inside angles of the shape thus created, so that the very narrow truncations protrude. The overall shape is of an overall irregular hexagon, stretched along the major axis from entrance to altar. A glance at Google Earth may be necessary to elucidate this.
The roofs are pitched in four sets, two for the hexagons and two for the parallelogram transepts. The two pitches on the two hexagons have ridges that slope up from entrance and altar respectively to where they meet. However, the pitches on the parallelograms are negative or reversed, and slope inwards from each side (as one looks at them) to a gulley. Where the rooflines of the parallelogram transepts meet the hexagons, there are two very thin parallelograms between them and the rooflines of the hexagons, and these are windows. Under the rooflines of the parallelogram transepts are two other windows, one each side of the angle, which have horizontal sills but tops that follow the rooflines. The effect is slightly sinister, as the form of the transept façades evokes the face of a robotic monster with squinting eyes.
The external walls are rendered in a pale-pinkish orange, and the roofs are tiled.
The entrance façade is very straightforward. It is gabled, and above the plain doorway is a large horizontal rectangular strip of window surmounted by a dedicatory inscription Chiesa S. Giorgio M. The concrete roofline protrudes as a shallow canopy. A flight of three stairs runs to the door.
The near sides of the church are abutted by subsidiary accommodation, including a large rectangular block running parallel to the street on the right. These structures include a pair of flat-roofed kiosks which flank the approach to the entrance, and which have blank front walls and a pair of side entrances facing each other.
Interior[]
The interior walls are in a pale pastel yellow to the level of the side windows, and then white above. The roof is also in white, with stained wooden rafters. These are longitudinal for the main section, and transverse for the two transepts. The main roof either side of the transepts has three V-shaped slab beams, running transversely.
The long window strip above the entrance has stained glass in an abstract pattern made up of various shapes and sizes of quadrilateral.
Liturgy[]
Church[]
Mass is celebrated:
Weekdays 18:00;
Sundays and Solemnities 8:00, 10:00, 11:30, 18:00.
External Mass centres[]
The parish has a subsidiary church and a convent chapel which is a public Mass centre:
Istituto delle Suore del Sacro Cuore del Verbo Incarnato, Via Ludovico Cardi 9. This is a school on the next city block to the west. The chapel has no dedication or architectural identity. Mass on weekdays is at 7:00.