Catacomb of Callixtus

Before you go underground, listen to the surface for a moment. Cypress and umbrella pines stand over quiet lawns. The old paving stones of the Appian Way lie just beyond the gate. And somewhere beneath your feet, in the cool dark, runs one of the largest underground cemeteries in Rome. When you step down the stairs, the air changes. It becomes still and damp, and it smells faintly of earth and old stone.

This is the Catacomb of Callixtus. It lies along the Via Appia Antica, the ancient Appian Way, just outside the old city walls. That location was no accident. Roman law did not allow burials inside the city, so cemeteries grew along the roads leading out of town. Pagan tombs lined this road long before the Christians came. The early Christian community simply followed the same rule, but it chose to dig down instead of building up.

The catacomb takes its name from Callixtus, a deacon of the early church. In the early third century, the bishop of Rome, Pope Zephyrinus, placed him in charge of this cemetery. Callixtus later became pope himself. Here is the first surprise: he is not buried here. Tradition holds that he was laid to rest in a different cemetery, on another road leading out of Rome. His name stays on the place he managed, not the place he rests.

Now look at the walls around you. They are cut from tufa, a soft volcanic stone that is easy to dig when fresh and hardens when it meets the air. Diggers called fossores carved the galleries by hand, working by the light of small oil lamps. They cut downward in layers as space ran out above. The result is a network of passages on several levels, stretching for many kilometres through the rock.

As you walk, you will see rows of rectangular niches stacked like shelves. These are loculi, the simplest graves. A body was wrapped in cloth, placed inside, and sealed with a slab of marble or a wall of tiles. Many of the niches are short. Some are very small indeed. They belonged to children, and there are a great many of them. Most of the bodies are long gone, but the empty openings remain.

Here is the second surprise, and it corrects a popular image. The catacombs were not secret hideouts where persecuted Christians lived in fear. Romans knew perfectly well where these cemeteries were. They were places for burial and for remembrance. Families came down to honour the dead on anniversaries. Living here would have been impossible. The air was close, the space was narrow, and the dead far outnumbered any visitor.

The most important room on the tour is the Crypt of the Popes. In the third century, several bishops of Rome were buried in this single chamber. You can still see fragments of their gravestones, with names carved in Greek, the common language of the early Roman church. For this reason, people sometimes call this place a little Vatican. It was, for a time, the official burial ground of the church's leaders.

One of those leaders was Pope Sixtus the Second. He died in 258, during a persecution under the Emperor Valerian. According to tradition, soldiers found him while he was leading a gathering in a cemetery, and he was executed along with several deacons. Ancient sources tell the story in slightly different ways, so treat the details with some care. But his memory was honoured here for centuries afterwards.

In the fourth century, after Christianity became legal, Pope Damasus restored many of the catacomb shrines. He wrote short poems in honour of the martyrs and had them carved in marble. The lettering is elegant and very regular, with fine serifs and graceful curves. Look closely at any surviving fragment of Damasus's inscriptions. The quality of the carving stands out clearly from the rough, everyday scratches on ordinary graves nearby.

Next to the Crypt of the Popes is the Crypt of Saint Cecilia. She is one of the best-loved martyrs of Rome. Her remains were later moved to a church in the Trastevere district. In this crypt you will see a copy of a famous marble statue of her. She lies on her side, and her head is turned away. The original stands in her church across the river. The pose is gentle and quiet, and many visitors stop here longer than anywhere else.

Further along, small family chambers called cubicula open off the passages. Some of them still carry paintings. Look for the simple symbols of early Christian art: a fish, an anchor, a dove with an olive branch, a shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders. There are also praying figures with their arms raised. These images were a kind of quiet code. They spoke of hope and safe arrival, without the scenes of suffering that later art would show.

Over time, the catacombs fell out of use. Relics were moved into city churches, the entrances collapsed, and many galleries were forgotten. In the nineteenth century, the archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi studied old pilgrim guides and searched this area carefully. In the 1840s and 1850s, his work identified the Crypt of the Popes. Today, the Salesians of Don Bosco, a Catholic religious order, look after the site and guide visitors through it.

When you come back up the stairs, pause in the daylight. Your eyes will need a moment. The warmth of the air will feel sudden after the steady cool below. Look at the pines and the lawns again, and remember the long passages running beneath them. As you walk out toward the Appian Way, every quiet field along this road may hold more of the same dark, patient work underground.