Bring Out Your Dead!

The Christian catacombs of Rome's Via Appia Antica (Ancient Appian Way)

Burials were forbidden within the city walls of ancient Rome as early as the 5th century BC. The Romans—pagan and, later, Christian, began a habit of burying their dead along and around the Via Appia Antica, the Ancient Appian Way, one of the major consular roads connecting Rome with the Adriatic seaports of the south.

Though most patrician Romans built their tombs aboveground, the early Christians hewed miles of tunnels—or catacombs—out of the soft tufa stone beneath the surface to bury their dead and, during the worst times of persecution, hold church services discreetly out of the public eye.

The Best Catacombs
San Callisto - The most crowded, but most impressive.
San Domitilla - Small but with intimate tours; my favorite.
San Sebastiano - The largest, but least rewarding.

A few of the catacombs are now open to the general public (see sidebar), so you can wander through mile after mile of musty-smelling tunnels whose soft walls are gouged out with tens of thousands of burial niches—long shelves made for two or three each. The requisite guided tours, hosted mainly by priests or monks, feature a smidgen of extremely biased history and a large helping of sermonizing.

For directions on how to get to the catacombs, see the main Appian Way page.