to be adapted for liturgical use. The basilica was T-shaped with a central nave with twelve columns on each side, flanked by side aisles. All that is left of these two side aisles, after the late 16th-century rebuilding, are the two side chapels of the basilica church. In the Synod of 565, the church is first referred to by the title of Susanna; the church has been dedicated to her veneration ever since. In the acta, Susanna is martyred with her family when the girl refuses to marry the son of Emperor Diocletian; the occasion of Susanna's martyrdom is a literary trope that is familiar in other "passions" of virgins in the Roman Martyrology Pope Sergius I restored it at the end of the 7th century, but Pope Leo III, the fourth pope who had been pastor of this church, rebuilt it from the ground in 796, adding the great apse and conserving the relics of the saints in the crypt. A vast mosaic of Christ flanked by Leo and the Emperor Charlemagne, and Saints Susanna and Felicity on the other side, was so badly damaged in the 12th century by an earthquake that the interior was plastered over in the complete renovation that spanned the years 1585–1602, and frescoed by Cesare Nebbia. A façade, in travertine, remained to be constructed. The present church of Santa Susanna on its ancient foundations was the first independent commission in Rome for Carlo Maderno, who had trained as an assistant to his uncle Domenico Fontana, the chief architect of Pope Sixtus V. In 1603, Maderno completed the façade, a highly influential early Baroque design. The dynamic rhythm of columns and pilasters, crowding centrally, and the protrusion and increased central decoration add further complexity to the structure. There is an interplay of relationships, none exactly symmetric on any one mirror side. The entrance and roof are surrounded by triangular pediments. The windows are replaced by niches. There is an incipient playfulness with the rules of classic design, still maintaining rigor. The statues of the higher level (Pope Caius and Genesius of Rome) are by Giovanni Antonio Paracea, those of the lower level (Susanna and Felicitas of Rome) are by Stefano Maderno. The church of Santa Susanna was accounted so successful that in 1605 Pope Paul V named Maderno architect of Saint Peter's Basilica, where he completed the nave and constructed the great façade. Modern