Ralph Waldo Emmerson described the present St Peter's Basilica, Rome, as ‘an ornament of the earth … the sublime of the beautiful’, and for those whose passion is the fusion of Renaissance and Baroque architecture and style, it remains unsurpassed. However, those whose interests lie in the earlier centuries of classical Christianity will always have a tinge of regret that Old St Peter's could not be saved, and that the present building replaced the older Constantinian church. That said, some parts of the old structure were incorporated into the new basilica, and many artefacts and reminders of the earlier church still survive. This collection of essays, with rich illustrations and diagrams, tell the story of what at present we know of the structure and life of the former building. Built over a protracted period in the fourth century, it was designed to enclose and showcase that part of the area of Vatican hill where tradition placed the burial site of the Apostle Peter. Though the Lateran was the official cathedral, St Peter's was the place that drew pilgrims, and with the withdrawal of the imperial court to Milan and then Ravenna, the pope came to fill the leadership vacuum which this created. Leo i developed the ideology of Peter and Paul, replacing Romulus and Remus as Rome's special guardians, and it was Leo who established the first monastery on the site since its growing importance required a resident clergy to undertake liturgical services. Pope Symmachus added a baptistery and various rooms for the pope's use. A major renovation was undertaken in the time of Gregory i. Its importance continued to increase, sealed perhaps by the coronation of Charlemagne in 800. Whatever its eminence, the sixteenth century regarded it as not worth keeping, and replaced it with a new temple fit for a renaissance prince. The multidisciplinary chapters of this study on the old edifice cover archaeology, art, architecture and liturgy. Richard Gem outlines the case for the initial building work commencing in 324 and spanning three decades. Lex Bosman notes how most of the coloured marble columns used in the fourth century were spolia, and Olaf Brandt demonstrates that we are uncertain when and where the old baptistery was built. Rosamond McKitterick takes on the task of examining how the old St. Peter's is represented in the Liber pontificalis – as a place of pilgrimage, a place of papal consecrations, of imperial coronations and a papal necropolis. Alan Thacker reconsiders the question of who was responsible for the liturgical celebrations, administration and guardianship of the ever-growing complex of buildings. The liturgy of the old basilica is treated by Peter Jeffery who argues that the office in St Peter's was heavily monastic, since eventually four monasteries served the liturgical life of the basilica. He also stresses that even though it is legitimate to distinguish between a monastic cursus and a Roman cursus of psalm distribution, even the Roman was no longer a secular office but highly monasticised. Also, the practice of singing psalms in alternation, or antiphonally, was not universally known in the old local liturgies of the West, but seems to have been a distinctly Roman and Benedictine feature. Eamonn Ó Carragáin considers the liturgical innovations associated with St Peter's, particularly as a way of asserting Rome's independence from Constantinople. Carmela Franklin discusses the three oldest volumes of hagiographic readings, marked for reading in the Divine Office. Charles McClendon discusses the religious images that were used at St Peter's during the iconoclastic controversy. These were used to witness to the orthodoxy of Rome. Other essays discuss various architectural elements of the old building, as well as relics, and Catherine Fletcher discusses the coronation ceremonies, associating them with the chapel of St Maurice. This is an excellent interdisciplinary study and the editors are to be congratulated on assembling a team competent to give such a panoramic picture of the life and times of the old church.