City of the Dead

Just outside of Rome is an entire underground "city of the dead". These are the catacombs, and are not for the claustrophobic. The grounds above were beautiful and well tended. The trees in the picture below are all olive trees. The gate was one of 2 entrances to the grounds.

We were prohibited from taking pictures inside the catacombs. The Italians consider it to be a sacred area, no loud talking, no joking around, no running, and absolutely no photographs. (Instead, they wanted us to buy postcards, calendars, etc for sale in the gift shop, so while they may consider the catacombs sacred, I guess it's still ok to make money off them.)

There is only a small door and stairway to get down into them, and I think we were about 3 stories under the ground when we stopped. We had to have a special catacomb guide to go with our group, because it is very easy to get lost down there. The catacombs go on for about 17 miles.

Folks were buried there because at one time, before Christ, (according to out guide) death was something to be feared and looked upon with dread and superstition. No one wanted to have a dead person buried around them, so all of the dead were taken to the catacombs. I believe our guide said that the rock underground was mostly limestone, so it could be scraped out without too much effort. Once the humidity and water from rain came down the rock, the limestone hardened. The lime also helped to preserve the bodies, and to keep the smell down a little. Some of the bodies were in their niches behind rocks but some were just laid to rest in plain sight. There were metal holders secured into the sides of the passageways for candles to light the way. Relatives of the deceased would go to visit sometimes and pay their respects much like we do when we go to cemetaries today.

The passageways were very narrow in some parts, and the scooped out resting places were usually only big enough for the body and not much more. It was cold and damp, and impossible to forget that we were surrounded by tons of rock.

Like Pompei, the catacombs are constanly being excavated and explored by those trained to do such work. There were several branches of the catacombs that our guide told us we were not allowed to see, as the bodies were still in place. The part that we were allowed to see had no bodies, only the empty spaces where the bodies had been. The guide told me that when they first opened the site up to the public, the bodies were left untouched and in place, but they had to move them eventually when they noticed that visitors and tourists to the catacombs were stealing bones as souveniers.