Who Is Buried in the Catacombs of Rome

Who is buried in the catacombs of Rome

San Callisto, on the Via Appia Antica, carries the big number. Its own site counts around half a million Christians laid in these galleries, among them dozens of martyrs and sixteen popes. The complex served as the official cemetery of the Church of Rome through the third century, which is why so much of the early clergy of the city ended up under the same roughly 90 acres of field.

Priscilla, north of the centre on Via Salaria, is the other clerical address: thousands of burials and seven popes on two levels rather than four. Domitilla's route is built around the only semi-underground basilica in Rome, dedicated to the soldier-martyrs Nereus and Achilleus and to St Petronilla.

Santi Marcellino e Pietro, out on Via Casilina, covers about 18,000 m² and holds an estimated 15,000 third-century burials. The Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology lists seven Roman catacombs open to the public in all, and the famous names in them amount to a handful of graves inside a cemetery of anonymous wall slots.

What the burials themselves look like

Almost everyone down there has no name you will hear on the visit. The standard grave along the corridors is the loculus, a slot cut lengthwise into the wall and closed with a marble slab or a line of bricks, stacked at every height for as far as the lighting reaches. Families with money paid for something better than a slot in the wall, and those are the tombs where the painting and the lettering have survived to be pointed out.

Two of the better tombs at Domitilla belong to people who were neither popes nor martyrs: the cubicle of Veneranda and the chamber of Diogenes, a gravedigger. The same route takes in the arcosolium of the Little Apostles and the Flavian Hypogeum. Ordinary trades and ordinary households are the social base of all of these cemeteries.

• Loculi: slots cut lengthwise into the gallery walls, sealed with marble slabs or bricks, the tomb type you see most of on any standard route
• Arcosolia: the second tomb type the Pontifical Commission lists, a step up in cost and in visibility
• Cubicula: chambers opening off the corridors, used by families, which is where the frescoes and the named inscriptions tend to be
• Not all Christian: the deepest part of San Sebastiano includes a second-century pagan necropolis with three mausoleums
• Jewish dead: the community buried at Vigna Randanini, Via Appia Antica 119, left about 700 metres of galleries on two levels used from the 2nd to the 4th centuries, with epitaphs in Greek and Latin and not one in Hebrew; reaching them is a matter of timing, since Roma Capitale lists that site as open only on special occasions and states that the Villa Torlonia hypogeum on Via Nomentana cannot be visited at all

Popes buried in the catacombs of Rome

Sixteen popes lie at San Callisto, and nine of them share a single room. That room is the Crypt of the Popes, the official burial place of nine pontiffs and probably eight dignitaries of the third-century Roman church, which is how it picked up the nickname of the little Vatican. The Greek inscriptions of Pontianus, Antherus, Fabian, Lucius and Eutychian are still readable on the walls, and Sixtus II, who died in Valerian's persecution, lies in the front wall.

Two more candidates turn up before you get that far. Near the entrance the route passes a pair of small three-apsed basilicas known as the Trichorae, where Pope Zephyrinus and the young martyr Tarcisius may have been buried.

Priscilla accounts for the other seven. The one the guide names is Sylvester, elected in 314, whose tomb lies beneath the excavated foundations of the basilica of San Silvestro raised over the cemetery. On either route, expect a lettered slab and a recess cut in the tufa.

Martyrs' tombs and the pilgrim traffic they created

Pilgrims are documented most directly at San Sebastiano. The site preserves the triclia, a covered hall fitted with benches, and next to it the Memoria Apostolorum, where third-century visitors scratched invocations into the plaster, among them 'Paule et Petre petite pro Victore'. The two names on those walls may once have been the names of occupants: a long line of scholars holds that the remains of Peter and Paul rested on this spot for a period, which would explain the sheer quantity of writing left behind.

Sebastian himself is split between two levels. His relics are kept at the altar dedicated to him in the basilica above the catacomb, with the arrow of his martyrdom and part of the column of his martyrdom, while his crypt underground is seen only on the accompanied visit.

The rest of the martyr roll call is spread across the city. Nereus and Achilleus, the soldiers commemorated at Domitilla, were probably put to death in Diocletian's persecution of 304 AD. Marcellinus and Peter were beheaded in Rome about the same year, and a Roman woman called Lucilla moved their remains to the ad Duas Lauros site on the Via Casilina that now carries their names. Agnes died at about the age of twelve and was buried in a first-level gallery roughly six metres below the present road surface on Via Nomentana.

Saint Cecilia's crypt and the tombs that stand empty

The crypt of St Cecilia at San Callisto comes immediately after the popes, and her body is not in it. The occupant left in 821, the year her relics were carried up to the basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, and the figure now lying in the chamber is a copy of the statue Stefano Maderno carved in 1599. Anyone hunting for Saint Cecilia in the catacombs of Rome is standing in the room she was taken from.

That upward movement explains most of the empty space below. As a cult grew, the relics went into a church where crowds could reach them without a staircase, which is also why Sebastian's altar stands in the basilica above his own galleries. The cut stone, the inscriptions and the paintings stayed put.

Set your expectations before you go down. The official sites describe loculi, arcosolia and cubicula and make no claim about visible remains, so plan for cut tufa, lettering and fresco rather than anything on display. None of it goes home with you as a photograph: cameras and video are prohibited inside San Callisto and San Sebastiano, and the staff at San Callisto are entitled to remove anyone who ignores that.

Choosing the site by who lies in it

Decide on the names first, then book the accompanied visit, because nobody walks these galleries alone and each site shows a different cast. For popes and for Cecilia, go to San Callisto. For pilgrim devotion to Peter and Paul, San Sebastiano is the only address in Rome that shows it in writing on the wall. For soldier-martyrs and named ordinary burials, Domitilla. For a second set of popes and the painting dated about 230 to 240 called the oldest known image of the Virgin, Priscilla.

Check the closing day for the site you have chosen before you plan anything else: San Callisto shuts on Wednesdays, Domitilla on Tuesdays, San Sebastiano and Priscilla on Mondays. The burial galleries sit at around 16 °C with high humidity at San Callisto and about 13 °C at Priscilla in every month of the year, so carry something warm whenever you come.

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