Midterm - Macabre Rome: A Cut Above the Rest

My first week in Rome was pleasant enough: puffy white clouds, songbirds in the morning, people smiling in the streets, and dozens of decaying human remains waiting to greet me in churches. In America, you are hard pressed to find a lifeless body on display anywhere outside of a morgue and even then you need a really good reason to see it. I was particularly interested in the heads: the most recognizable and psychological feature now just a mere object. I viewed many sites, but below you’ll only find the spots that were a head and shoulder above the rest.


Saint Valentine, Santa Maria in Cosmedin

I decided to visit this lovely saint’s decapitated cranium on Valentine’s Day, but was surprised to find the 4th century church nearly empty, even though a line wrapped around the building for pictures with its other famous attraction: La Bocca della Verità, or The Mouth of Truth. I guess some people have better things to do on the day of love than visit the dead.

Saint Valentine has got to be the tiniest head I have ever seen, living or departed. It seems at some point a creative monk thought it would be a good idea to shove some red roses on him, almost like Jesus’ crown of thorns. Poor Valentine sadly gazes out at his audience, completely embarrassed by this game of dress up. His missing tooth and jaw added to my pity for him, his golden display case resembling a gilded cage for this once rebelliously romantic saint.


John the Baptist, San Silvestro in Capite

Chopped off by order of King Herod Antipas after a night of drinking, the location of John the Baptist’s true head is claimed by seven places around the world. The church itself is enjoyable enough though, decorated in paintings of decapitations, assassinations, and suffering saints.

I found John in a blindingly white room off to the side and was terrified by what I saw. This particular head is mummified, with a black stone-like cloth tightly covering every inch of his skull and its tilt turning a missing jaw into a permanent scream. The glass case that covers him reflects a nearby red candle’s glow out from his eye sockets (at certain angles) and I was convinced those covered holes could still somehow see me. Where those floor to ceiling bars put there to keep us out, or John the Baptist in?


Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccino

Feng shui meets the macabre in this church’s unique crypt. In 1631, to save space, bodies were exhumed and, for some unknown reason, put up on the walls instead of in containers. There are entire walls filled with skulls carefully stacked upon each other, creating sturdy columns, cute arches, and delightful centerpieces to pelvis star designs. Some even have the skin left on to help you lose your appetite that much easier.

My favorite room was made clear when I was reminded of the true purpose of an idle cranium: the classic skull and crossbones. This piratey design was found in several places throughout the third area of the crypt, adorning the walls above a few lucky (deceased) monks.

For such a dark theme, the monks really did a good job of keeping the place cheerful, with ribcage flowers, hipbone fans, countless vertebrae lining the walls, and a jolly message at the end “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”


David With The Head Of Goliath, Villa Borghese

The last stop on our dark tour of craniums is the master of light and dark himself: Caravaggio. He seemed to have a clear grasp of what an actual decapitated head looks like for this painting, making it the perfect end for those that get lightheaded when viewing the dead. In a twisted decision by a depressed artist, Caravaggio painted the head in his own likeness as David sadly looks on. This was a point in Caravaggio’s life when he was desperate to go back to Rome, the city he was exiled from for killing a man, a feeling shown in this somber painting.


This is only a small sampling of the captivatingly decapitated heads to be found in Rome. And whether your visit takes you to catacombs or crypts, you can always rest in peace knowing that if the dead become a bit overwhelming, your exit to the world of the living is always near.

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.