The long and fascinating history of the abbey of SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio at Tre Fontane Near Rome reached back into roman antiquity. An ancient martyrium marked the spot where the apostle Paul was believed to have been beheaded and three fountains said to have sprung up as his head hit the ground were places of pilgrimage and monastic habitation. Around 1140 Pope Innocent II invited Bernard of Clairvaux to establish a Cistercian monastery on the site. Its first abbot later became pope as Eugene III, for whom Bernard wrote his Five Books on Consideration advising him how a pope much involved in business could, and must, maintain a contemplative life. Today, following nineteenth-century suppression and refoundation, it is once again a Cistercian abbey. Working with architectural, archaeological, epigraphic and documentary evidence Joan Barclay Lloyd traces the vicissitudes of this historic monastery. As she untangles pious tradition from historical fact she also decodes the architectural influences of Rome and Burgundy, and traces the alterations wrought over centuries of habitation.