The church is specific not due to the monumentality of its proportions, or decorations, but…the amazing play of light and shadow combined with a unique arrangement of the interior. Although it has been diminished in size in comparison with the original, the building still makes a great impression. Finding ourselves inside, we are closed off in a circle of columns, in a space, where we seem to be unable to focus on anything. Our eyes wander slowly, looking up at the tambour and the repeating window openings. Despite most of the windows being covered up, the church interior itself is drowned in light, which fills it with a truly joyful atmosphere. Within its walls, we can feel that it is a house of God emanating with brightness and eternal light.

Initially the barracks of the Roman, imperial, secret police were located here. Until the IV century, a mithraeum was also located here. Probably at that time, the structure fell into ruin, providing the foundation for a church which was erected here in the first half of the V century – it was raised on a plan of a circle with a diameter of nearly 66 meters. We do not know who was its founder. Some see him as the bishop of Rome Hilarius, others Emperor Valentinian III. Nevertheless, the structure was consecrated between the years 468 and 483 by Pope Simplicius. Originally it truly looked imposing – three rows of columns divided the space of the interior into three separate circles. The middle one, was the highest, stretching far above the roof of the next circle and filled at the very top with a thick row of windows allowing beams of light inside. The following circle did not have any windows, it did however have a row of columns, which opened up onto a sort of a semi-circular ambulatory (today it is walled up), opening up onto the third circle of columns (no longer existing). These were ultimately closed off by the outer wall. However, if that was not enough, a plan of the Greek cross was superimposed onto the circles, while at the ends of its four arms chapels protruding above the second and third circle were placed. The church used to have eight entrances, which in an excellent way regulated the stream of people flowing into the church. In creating this building, there was a direct reference to imperial mausoleums, pagan temples, but most of all to a structure, which enjoyed the greatest esteem in all of the then world – the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

In the VI century the church was decorated with mosaics – their colorful coating brightened the vault of the ambulatory, the chapels and the top of the building. This shine and splendor is in a distant way recalled by the only chapel preserved from that time – Chapel of Primus and Felician. The earthly remains of theses saints – victims of persecutions during the times of Emperor Diocletian – were transferred here from the catacombs by Pope Theodore I, which was a significant event – the first official translation of corpses from a place of burial into a church. The procedure, which until that time had been rejected by the popes, since then became a mass phenomenon. The pope made the appropriate choice, not only for the church, but for the whole Christian community, which at that moment discovered in itself the unparalleled desire of mass pilgrimage to churches which housed the relics of martyrs (cult of the martyrs). It was because of these saints, Primus and Felician (and not St. Stephen), that the faithful visiting the Eternal City came here in bygone times. The chapel dedicated to them, decorated with frescoes from mid-VII century, leads us into an intimate aura of the art of that period. In the niche there are two saint martyrs dressed in tunics, with rather flat figures and beautifully modeled faces. In their hands they hold scrolls, one of them is older, the other younger. The adore the cross, with the image of Christ (in the round medallion), which stands between them – the very same one which, Emperor Constantine the Great had placed on the Golgotha in Jerusalem. On it is a semi-circle with stars and the emerging hand of God, which hands a crown to Christ. The golden background of the niche and flowers with red petals at the feet of the saints are to suggest their glory in paradise. The martyrdom of the saints, a reference to the Crucifixion of the Savior, his heavenly ascension, and the eternal glory of paradise – all of this was told here in a mere few paintings in a simple and honest way. The language of this mosaic was not lost in a mass of details, focusing on the most important moments of a Christian’s life, leading him into the great mystery of faith.

With the passage of time, the church fell into ruin. The final blow was stuck by Normans in the IX century. It was then reconstructed, but in a more modest form – made smaller by the outer circle. An arcade portico was added in the east, the one through which the church is accessed today.

The state of divine sensation disappears, when we turn our eyes to the surrounding walls with frescoes by Niccolò Circignani, an artist known by his graceful nickname of Pomarancio, the same one who was publicly ridiculed by Caravaggio, and   accused by him of lacking any kind of painting talent, but who at the end of the XVI century along with Matteo da Siena adorned this church with 34 scenes of the martyrdom of the first Christians. Besides that, another artist of those times, Antonio Tempesta, completed a series of frescoes in the Chapel of Primus and Felician (the former church presbytery), devoted to the life and the martyrdom of the two martyrs honored within. There can be nothing more contrasting  than the heavenly architecture of this place and this breviary of all sorts of cruelty. Bodies are quartered, broken with a wheel, have their entrails removed, are burned, boiled, whipped, and maltreated with the use of all kinds of elaborate tools, to such an extend that today they are a source of anxiety and resistance for the onlooker. The inscriptions painted on the plaques accompanying the paintings provided additional information about the torture, where it was said exactly during the reign of which emperor persecutions took place, who is immortalized on the fresco and how he or she was martyred. For instance, on one of the plaques we can read that, three early-Christian martyrs were boiled in lead with added turpentine and tar. If some alien unaware of the arcana of the Roman Catholic faith, had landed here, he would have most likely been certain that he was witnessing a cult, whose main credo is not brotherly love but human martyrdom.

The frescoes were a refined propaganda and illustrative material for the Jesuits, who during the Counterreformation, in the Collegium Germanicum created here, educated future adepts to convert the Protestant populace of the German lands back to Roman Catholicism. These painted, barbarous acts, were to on one hand make them aware of the barbarism of the Lutheran dissenters, while on the other prepare them to be ready to suffer a similar fate to that, which the martyrs had suffered. They were known as “warriors of faith bereft of all fear”, while it was their calling to even sacrifice their life on the altar of the Church. However, the principal goal was different: it was about an ideological connection between the victims of the times of early Christians with the Roman Church, which had in this way documented its monopoly when it comes to faith, in  opposition to all kinds of heretical splinter groups of those times. Today it sounds rather pompous and old-fashioned, but at the moment when the Collegium was created, meaning 1556, these were not just slogans. The Reformation gathered more and more popularity in Europe and seemed a plague which would be exceptionally difficult to stop for the Catholic Church. Planned, intelligent and determined actions were required. The Roman Curia and Pope Gregory XIII – an influential protector of the Collegium – saw reasons for the Reformation in the inappropriate education of the German clergy, therefore this was chosen as the starting point. Adepts from German cities came to Rome for their training and they had to exhibit not only theological education and the proper conduct in line with the Jesuit rules, but also make a declaration of unconditional return to Germany with the aim of spreading the Catholic faith. They were to be the new elite and from within their ranks came bishops of that time.

In 1580 the Collegium Germanicum was unified with the Collegium Hungaricum, which had similar tasks but in Hungary. Since that time this institution, under the name of Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, with differing success, has been functioning until the present, while one of its churches is the San Stefano Rotondo.

However, let us return to the church patron. Obviously in this areopagus of martyrs painted by Pomarancio, there had to be room for St. Stephen, who started it all. It must be admitted that the story of the numerous relics of Stephen, which appear in the whole Mediterranean Basin, does not encourage the detailed analysis of their origin. The only thing that is certain is that, the Church officially announced the discovery of the tomb of Stephen in Palestine in the year 415. In 439, his remains were transferred into a new church, dedicated to him in Jerusalem. The information of the miraculous discovery of the relics of the first martyr, spread throughout the then Christian world. Was the church on the Roman Celio Hill built for him, or more appropriately for his relics? Most likely, although we do not have direct information on the subject. The popularity of the cult of St. Stephen in Rome in the V century, can be testified to by the creation of another, smaller, private church, which was also dedicated to him, this time outside the city walls – the San Stefano Protomartire.