The Roman Catacombs

I visited the Catacombs of Domitilla at the beginning of my time in Rome. It is the largest of Rome’s catacombs, containing over 450,000 bodies and the only one to still contain bones. Amazingly, the entrance is through an underground sunken basilica that was rediscovered in the 1500’s.

The tour is pretty straightforward: you get a tour guide, he tells you about the church, the history of the catacombs, and gives you a basic run through of Christian symbols you’re about to see before taking you into the maze of tombs itself. The great part about Domitilla is it’s infamous for having funny tour guides. I guess they figure if you’re already going to be spending an hour below ground amongst the dead, you’re bound to appreciate a little bit of morbid humor.

I wonder what it would be like, leading people through a place like this everyday. When you are hired, they have you wander around the catacombs, granting you access to every floor, every room, so you can familiarize yourself with the area and choose the paths you’ll lead people through. This also serves as a mini-initiation to their group, as most people get hopelessly lost for hours in the beginning and the experienced others leave them to find their own way out.

The actual catacombs are cold and damp, which for some reason came as a surprise to me. Water dripped off the walls even though it was a warm and sunny day outside. This is actually a result of all the people that go into the complex daily, as the moisture from our breath has no where to go. The unfortunate side effect of this is that it creates the perfect atmosphere for moss, which in turn is destroying many of the perfectly preserved frescoes. I was lucky enough to see a beautiful fresco in a wealthy family tomb, as our tour guide informed us that it would be closed to visitors forever starting in March. In the top corner of the room was a huge green mass was creeping into the more colorful parts of the artwork.

Many of the tombs are unsealed and empty. This is a result of various invasions of Rome, when invaders opened thousands of tombs looking for valuables. Unfortunately for them, Christians at the time believed in being buried as Jesus was: wrapped in linen with no possessions. For some reason, after discovering numerous tombs like this, the invaders reasoned that they should continuing opening tombs, as the first couple hundred that contained nothing couldn’t possibly mean the next hundred wouldn’t as well. This is amazing logic for people who just successfully toppled an empire and managed to conquer its capital.

I think the part that stuck with me the most though was the air shafts. Catacomb workers were pretty much their own bosses, deciding where to dig and how many people they could fit into a wall. This lead to a series of unorganized, maze-like pathways that went deeper and deeper underground. To get supplies in an out, and to keep the area livable, workers carved out large shafts to the surface to let in air, light, and to provide a means to lower down supplies. The curious thing is, they also used these as a shortcut to get outside. Within the air shafts are carved small holes for feet and hands so they could climb out. It is mind blowing to think about the skill and lives of these workers, carving holes in wall as they climb up, spending their days in the dark with the dead, and figuring out how to fit another body in an already cramped section as if they were bottles of olive oil on a shelf.

Each catacomb of Rome contains something different from the rest, whether it be ancient papal tombs or the first depiction of a bearded Christ. They might not be as grotesque and flashy as the Parisian catacombs, but their subtle charm and humble modesty, combined with a good sense of humor, is sure to bring me back before the end of my stay.