One of his first resolves on coming to Rome in 1591 was to rebuild the almost ruinous Church of St. Cecilia, and, while doing so, to find her tomb, of which the exact location had been lost in the eight hundred years that had elapsed since Paschal closed it. Other traces of her presence had also disappeared, and it was reserved for Sfondrato to rediscover the bathroom where she had expired. At first a chapel had been built over it, but with succeeding modifications this had been pulled down and the space incorporated in the Church, and, although there were old men then alive who remembered having prayed there in their childhood, it was only after much study of the ancient and actual topography that Sfondrato was led to the correct spot. There, however, all doubts were set at rest. He found the “calidarium,” of the small size adapted to a private dwelling, with its marble floor, its great boiler, and the remains of the leaden and earthenware pipes through which the steam percolated into the bathroom. When the rubbish was cleared away it was easy to call up the touching scenes it had witnessed in those May days fourteen hundred years earlier. The pious Cardinal, wishing to place under the High Altar of the restored basilica some precious relics of other saints, commanded the workmen to take up the pavement, so that the supposed space below could be utilised for this purpose. They found, however, that there was only a very small recess there, and that all further excavation was arrested by a thick rounded wall of exceedingly solid material. Sfondrato at once realised that this must be the barrier mentioned in Paschal’s account of the burial of St. Cecilia by himself, and directed the masons to make some aperture in the wall, through which a glimpse might be obtained of that which it protected. At the same time he was so scrupulous as to the respect to be shown to the martyr that he forbade the men to strike a blow of any kind except in his own presence.