Cemeteries under the roads
Roman law did not allow burials inside the city, so Romans of every faith buried their dead along the roads leading out of town. Land there was expensive, but the soft volcanic rock under it, tufa, was easy to dig. From the second century Christian communities began to cut long galleries underground, on several levels, and to line them with graves. There are more than sixty catacombs around Rome, along roads such as the Appian Way; Jews and pagans also had some.
The name comes from one place: a spot on the Appian Way called ad catacumbas, “by the hollows”, where the church of San Sebastiano stands. Its cemetery was famous and stayed visited through the Middle Ages, and its name was later used for all the others.
Not a hiding place
A popular image shows early Christians hiding in the catacombs from persecution. It is mostly a later legend. The catacombs were known to the authorities, as cemeteries were protected by Roman law, and their narrow, airless galleries were no place to live. Persecutions were real but came in waves. What the catacombs did become was a place of memory: the tombs of martyrs drew pilgrims, who left inscriptions and prayers on the walls. In the Catacombs of San Callisto, a chamber known as the Crypt of the Popes held the graves of several third-century bishops of Rome.
Roman styles, Christian meanings
The painters who decorated the family rooms and arched tombs worked in the same quick fresco style used in Roman houses such as those of Pompeii, with figures on pale walls framed by red and green lines. What changed was the meaning. A young shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders was a familiar pastoral figure in Roman art; for Christians he became the Good Shepherd, Christ caring for his flock. A woman with raised arms, the orant, was a pagan image of piety; here she stood for the soul in prayer.
The favourite stories were of rescue from death: Jonah thrown up by the sea monster, Daniel among the lions, Noah in the ark, the raising of Lazarus. Banquet scenes may recall funeral meals or the Eucharist. These were images of hope chosen for a burial place; scenes of Christ’s suffering appear only much later.
In the Catacomb of Priscilla, on the Via Salaria, a painting from the early third century shows a woman with a child on her lap and a prophet pointing to a star. It is often called the oldest known image of the Virgin Mary.
Forgotten and found again
After the fifth century, burials moved to churches and the relics of martyrs were carried into the city. Most catacombs were abandoned and forgotten. In 1578 workers on the Via Salaria broke into one by chance, and the scholar Antonio Bosio spent decades exploring others; his book Roma sotterranea appeared in 1632. In the nineteenth century the archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi began their systematic study. The Christian catacombs are now looked after by the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, and only a few are open to visitors, always with a guide.
Where to see it
The catacombs of San Callisto and San Sebastiano are on the Via Appia Antica, Domitilla nearby on Via delle Sette Chiese, and Priscilla on Via Salaria in the north of the city. Each can be visited on a guided tour.
Sources
- Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, “Catacombe di Roma”.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline, “The Roman Catacombs”.
- V. Fiocchi Nicolai, F. Bisconti and D. Mazzoleni, The Christian Catacombs of Rome (Regensburg, 1999).
