One of the Seven Churches of Rome

Santa Croce is one of the Seven Pilgrimage Churches that formed the traditional walking circuit of Rome, codified by Saint Philip Neri in the sixteenth century, alongside Saint Peter's, Saint John Lateran, Saint Mary Major, Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Saint Lawrence and, formerly, Saint Sebastian. As the church of the relics of the Passion it was the natural station for Good Friday devotions, and it remains a titular church of the Roman Catholic Church, its cardinal-priest bearing the title of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

The present building keeps a twelfth-century Romanesque core behind an exuberant Baroque facade added in the 1740s under Benedict XIV. It lies within the UNESCO World Heritage property "Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura," first inscribed in 1980 and extended in 1990 to take in the Holy See's extraterritorial properties, of which Santa Croce is one.