Opposite the door of this church is the entrance of the _Vigna dei Gesuiti_, a wild and beautiful vineyard occupying the greater part of this deserted hill, and extending as far as the Porta S. Paolo and the pyramid of Caius Cestius. Several farm-houses are scattered amongst the vines and fruit trees. There are beautiful views towards the Alban mountains, and to the Pseudo-Aventine with its fortress-like convents. The ground is littered with fragments of marbles and alabaster, which lie unheeded among the vegetables, relics of unknown edifices which once existed here. Just where the path in the vineyard descends a slight declivity towards S. Paolo, are the finest existing remains of the _Walls of Servius Tullius_,[190] formed of large quadrilateral blocks of tufa, laid alternately long and cross-ways, as in the Etruscan buildings. The spot is beautiful, and overgrown by a luxuriance of wild mignonette and other flowers in the late spring. Descending to the valley beneath Sta. Prisca, and crossing the lane which leads from the Via Appia to the Porta S. Paolo, we reach, on the side of the Pseudo-Aventine, the _Church of S. Sabba_, which is supposed to mark the site of the Porta Randusculana of the walls of Servius Tullius. Its position is very striking, and its portico, built in A.D. 1200, is picturesque and curious. This church is of unknown origin, but is known to have existed in the time of St. Gregory the Great, and to have been one of the fourteen privileged abbacies of Rome. Its patron saint was St. Sabbas, an abbot of Cappadocia, who died at Jerusalem in A.D. 532. "The record of the artist Jacobus dei Cosmati, dated the third year of Innocent III. (1205), on the lintel of the mosaic-inlaid doorway, justifies us in classing this church among monuments of the thirteenth century. From its origin a Greek monastery, it was assigned by Lucius II., in 1141, to the Benedictines of the Cluny rule. An epigraph near the sacristy mentions a rebuilding either of the cloisters or church, in 1325, by an abbot Joannes; and in 1465 the roof was renewed in woodwork by a cardinal, the nephew of Pius II. "In 1512 the Cistercians of Clairvaux were located here by Julius II.; and some years later these buildings were given to the Germanic-Hungarian College. Amidst gardens and vineyards, approached by a solitary lane between hedgerows, this now deserted sanctuary has a certain affecting character in its forlornness. Save on Thursdays, when the German students are brought hither by their Jesuit professors to enliven the solitude by their sports and converse, we might never succeed in finding entrance to this quiet retreat of the monks of old.