Catacombs of Rome: Early Christian Burials Beneath the City

The Catacombs of Rome are networks of underground tunnels and burial chambers dug outside the walls of ancient Rome, mainly between the late 2nd and the 5th centuries AD. Used above all by the city’s Christians, as well as by its Jewish community, they held hundreds of thousands of graves. Their inscriptions and wall paintings are among the earliest surviving evidence of Christian belief and art, and the most famous, such as the Catacomb of Callixtus on the Via Appia, can still be visited.

Why Romans buried underground

Since the Twelve Tables of the 5th century BC, Roman law had forbidden burial within the city. Tombs lined the roads leading out of Rome, such as the Via Appia, Via Salaria and Via Nomentana. By the 2nd century AD cremation was giving way to inhumation, the burial of the whole body, which needed far more space.

The geology around Rome offered a solution. Much of the land is made of tuff, a volcanic rock soft enough to cut with simple tools but firm enough to stand without heavy support. Families and burial associations had already dug private underground tombs called hypogea. Christian communities, which wanted their members buried together and could not afford large plots, expanded this practice into cemeteries on several levels, sometimes four or five floors deep.

The word catacomb comes from a place name, ad catacumbas, “near the hollows”, used for the area around the Basilica of Saint Sebastian on the Via Appia. In the Middle Ages, when that was the only cemetery still known, the name spread to all underground cemeteries.

The first Christian cemeteries

The earliest firm evidence for a cemetery owned by the Roman church dates from around 200. The writer Hippolytus records that Bishop Zephyrinus (c. 199–217) put a deacon named Callixtus in charge of “the cemetery”. Callixtus later became bishop himself, and the complex on the Via Appia that bears his name is the best known of all the catacombs.

The Catacomb of Callixtus grew to some 20 kilometres of galleries on four levels and is often estimated to have held around half a million burials. Its Crypt of the Popes contained the tombs of several 3rd-century bishops of Rome, including Pontian, Fabian, who died in the Decian persecution of 250, and Sixtus II, executed in 258. Other major catacombs include Priscilla on the Via Salaria, Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina and Saint Agnes on the Via Nomentana.

How the catacombs were dug and used

Specialist diggers called fossores cut the galleries and tombs and are themselves shown in some paintings with picks and lamps. The commonest tomb was the loculus, a horizontal niche cut into the gallery wall, closed with tiles or a marble slab carrying the name of the dead. Wealthier families could afford an arcosolium, an arched niche, or a cubiculum, a small private chamber.

Galleries are typically about a metre wide and two to three metres high. Light shafts called lucernaria brought air and light down from the surface. Families gathered at the graves for funerals and for refrigeria, memorial meals held on anniversaries of a death. Inscriptions are often short: a name, an age, the words “in peace” or symbols such as a fish, a dove or an anchor.

Early Christian art

The catacombs preserve the largest body of early Christian painting. Artists used Roman decorative styles but filled them with new themes. Common scenes include the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep, a figure praying with raised arms known as an orans, Jonah and the sea monster, Daniel among the lions, Noah in the ark and the raising of Lazarus.

These images stress rescue and life after death rather than suffering. The Crypt of Lucina in Callixtus has paintings of a fish with a basket of bread, an early symbol of Christ and the Eucharist. A painting in the Catacomb of Priscilla, often dated to the 3rd century, shows a woman with a child and a figure pointing to a star and is widely regarded as one of the earliest images of the Virgin Mary.

Martyr shrines, decline and rediscovery

After Christianity was legalised by the Edict of Milan in 313, the graves of martyrs became places of pilgrimage. Pope Damasus I (366–384) restored many shrines and set up verse epitaphs carved in elegant lettering. People wanted to be buried near the martyrs, but from the early 5th century most burials moved to cemeteries above ground beside new basilicas.

The catacombs remained pilgrimage sites for some centuries. After the Lombard raids of the 8th century, popes began moving martyrs’ relics to churches inside the city, a process largely complete by the 9th century. Most catacombs were then abandoned and forgotten, apart from a few near churches such as Saint Sebastian.

On 31 May 1578 workers digging on the Via Salaria broke into a painted catacomb, causing a sensation in Counter-Reformation Rome. The scholar Antonio Bosio explored dozens of sites, and his Roma Sotterranea was published after his death in 1632. In the 19th century Giovanni Battista de Rossi founded modern Christian archaeology; in 1854 he identified the Crypt of the Popes in Callixtus. Pope Pius IX created the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology in 1852, and it still manages the Christian catacombs.

Visiting the catacombs today

Around 60 catacombs are known around Rome, and estimates of the combined length of their galleries commonly exceed 150 kilometres. Only a few are open to the public, always with guides, because the galleries are fragile and easy to get lost in. The most visited are Callixtus, Saint Sebastian and Domitilla near the Via Appia Antica, and Priscilla and Saint Agnes to the north.

Since the Lateran Treaty of 1929 the Christian catacombs have been under the care of the Holy See, even though they lie on Italian territory. Restoration continues: in the 2000s and 2010s laser cleaning revealed paintings of the apostles in the Catacomb of Saint Thecla and restored frescoes in Priscilla and Domitilla.

Myths and facts

The most widespread myth is that Christians hid and lived in the catacombs to escape persecution. The cemeteries were known to the authorities, their entrances were often near public roads, and the galleries were unsuitable for living. During the persecution of Valerian in 257, Christians were in fact forbidden to enter their cemeteries.

Another misconception is that the catacombs were exclusively Christian. Rome had several Jewish catacombs, such as those of Vigna Randanini and Villa Torlonia, and some early galleries began as pagan family tombs.

Timeline

• c. 450 BC: The Twelve Tables ban burials inside the city of Rome.
• c. 199–217: Bishop Zephyrinus puts Callixtus in charge of the church’s cemetery.
• 250: Bishop Fabian is executed and buried in the Crypt of the Popes.
• 258: Sixtus II is executed during the persecution of Valerian.
• 366–384: Pope Damasus I restores martyrs’ tombs and adds verse inscriptions.
• Early 5th century: Burial in the catacombs largely ceases.
• 8th–9th centuries: Relics transferred to churches inside Rome.
• 1578, 31 May: A catacomb on the Via Salaria is rediscovered by chance.
• 1854: De Rossi identifies the Crypt of the Popes.

Why it matters

The catacombs show how ordinary Christians in Rome lived, died and remembered their dead in the centuries before and after Constantine. Their thousands of inscriptions and paintings record names, ages, family ties and hopes that appear nowhere in literary sources, making them an irreplaceable archive of the early church.