Catacombs of San Callisto

Historic · Appia AnticaRome,Italy

Ten kilometres of Christian burial galleries cut into soft rock south of Rome, the graves emptied long ago and the crypt of nine popes left.

The Catacombs of San Callisto are more than ten kilometres of galleries cut into soft volcanic rock south of Rome, on as many as five levels, holding the graves of many thousands of early Christians. Roman law forbade burial inside the city, so every community buried outside it, and Christians dug downward instead of outward because land along the road was expensive and they wanted to stay together. The galleries are narrow corridors with rectangular slots cut in the walls from floor to ceiling, each one closed with a slab of marble or tile. Most are open and empty now. The crypt at the centre held the bishops of Rome through the third century. Nine of them were buried in this one small chamber, and five of their name slabs are still fixed to the wall, cut in Greek because that was still the language of the Roman church. The bones themselves were taken away from the eighth century onward and moved into churches inside the walls, where they were safer and easier to visit. What is left underground is the architecture of a cemetery: the shelves, the inscriptions, the scratched drawings, and no bodies at all.

Worth knowing

Good to know

It stays around fifteen degrees down there in every month — bring a layer even in August, because the tour takes half an hour underground and the drop from the heat outside is sudden.
You go with a guide or not at all — groups are formed by language at the ticket office, there is no wandering alone, and the descent is twenty metres of stone stairs with no lift.
Do not leave it late in the day, and never come on a Wednesday — this site closes one full day a week and the last group of the afternoon leaves well before the gate shuts.
No photographs below ground, and the rule is applied — the guides will stop you, and the galleries are treated as a burial place rather than a monument.

Things to do

1
Stand in the Crypt of the Popes
The chamber is small, plain and rectangular, with the burial slots cut into the walls at head height. Find the surviving name slabs and read the Greek letters. Nine bishops of Rome were laid here within about fifty years, in a room smaller than an ordinary bedroom.
2
Look for the drawings scratched beside the graves
As the guide moves you along, watch the plaster and the slabs at eye level. Anchors, fish, doves, a shepherd carrying a sheep, names spelled wrong. These were cut by relatives rather than by artists, standing where you are now, in bad light and in a hurry.
3
Come up and walk out through the fields
The exit puts you back on a drive through open ground, with pines, cypresses, dry grass and almost no buildings. Walk it slowly instead of heading straight for the bus. A few minutes earlier you were twenty metres underground among the graves, and that change is what makes the place stay with you.