Santo Stefano Rotondo (c480). The Basilica of St. Stephen in the Round on the Celian Hill is an ancient basilica and titular church in Rome, Italy. Commonly named Santo Stefano Rotondo, the church is Hungary's national church in Rome, dedicated to both Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and Stephen I, the sanctified first king of Hungary who imposed Christianity on his subjects. The minor basilica is also the rectory church of the Pontifical Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum. As of 2005, the Cardinal Priest or titular S. Stephano is Friedrich Wetter. The earliest church was consecrated by Pope Simplicius between 468 and 483. It was dedicated to the protomartyr Saint Stephen, whose body had been discovered a few decades before in the Holy Land, and brought to Rome. The church was the first in Rome to have a circular plan. Its architecture is unique in the Late Roman world. Saint Stefano was probably financed by the wealthy Valerius family whose estates covered large parts of the Caelian Hill. Their villa stood nearby, on the site of the present-day Hospital of San Giovanni Addolorata. Saint Melania the Elder, a member of the family, was a frequent pilgrim to Jerusalem and died there, so the family had connections to the Holy Land. The church was originally commissioned by Pope Leo I, with the date confirmed by ancient coins and by dendrochronology, which places the wood used in the beams of the roof to around 455 AD, but was not consecrated until after his death. The original church had three concentric ambulatories flanked by 22 Ionic columns, surrounding the central circular space surmounted by a tambour that is 22 m high and 22 m wide. There were 22 windows in the tambour but most of them were walled up in the 15th century restoration. The central ambulatory had a diameter of 42 m, and the outer one a diameter of 66 m. Four side chapels extended from the middle ambulatory to the outer ambulatory, forming a Greek cross. The church was embellished by Pope John I and Pope Felix IV in the 6th century with mosaics and colored marble. It was restored in 1139-1143 by Pope Innocent II, who abandoned the outer ambulatory and three of the four side chapels. He also had three transversal arches added to support the dome, enclosed the columns of the central ambulatory with brick to form the new outer wall, and walled up 14 of the windows in the drum. In the Middle Ages, Santo Stefano Rotondo was in the charge of the Canons of San Giovanni in Laterano, but as time went on it fell into disrepair. In the middle of the 15th century, Flavio Biondo praised the marble columns, marble-covered walls, and cosmatesque works-of-art of the church, but he added that unfortunately nowadays Santo Stefano Rotondo has no roof. Blondus claimed that the church was built on the remains of an ancient Temple of Faunus. Excavations in 1969 to 1975 revealed that the building was actually never converted from a pagan temple but was always a church, erected under Constantine I in the first half of the 4th century. In 1454, Pope Nicholas V entrusted the ruined church to the Pauline Fathers, the only Catholic Order founded by Hungarians. This is the reason why Santo Stefano Rotondo later became the unofficial church of the Hungarians in Rome. The church was restored in the 1450s by Bernardo Rossellino, probably under the guidance of Leon Battista Alberti. In 1579, the Hungarian Jesuits joined the Pauline Fathers. The Collegium Hungaricum, established by Istven Arator in 1579, was merged with the Collegium Germanicum in 1580, and became the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, because very few Hungarian students were able to travel to Rome from the Turkish-occupied, Kingdom of Hungary. The Cardinal Priest of the Titulus S. Stephani in Coelio Monte has been Friedrich Wetter since 1985. His predecessor, Jozsef Mindszenty, was famous as the persecuted Catholic leader of Hungary under the Communist dictatorship. Although the inside is circular, the exterior is on a cruciform plan. The walls of the church are decorated with numerous frescoes, including those of Niccolo Circignani and Antonio Tempesta portraying 34 scenes of martyrdom, commissioned by Gregory XIII in the 16th century. Each painting has a titulus or inscription explaining the scene and giving the name of the emperor who ordered the execution, as well as a quotation from the Bible. The altar was made by the Florentine artist Bernardo Rossellino in the 15th century. The painting in the apse shows Christ between two martyrs. An ancient chair of Pope Gregory the Great from around 580 AD is preserved here.