Catacombs of Domitilla

Beneath the fields and lanes south of Rome's ancient walls, the volcanic tuff is threaded with one of the largest underground cemeteries of the early Church. The Catacombs of Domitilla run for kilometres through narrow corridors stacked on four levels, their walls lined with tier upon tier of empty burial niches, and they open, unusually, into a church: a three-aisled basilica sunk half below ground into the cemetery itself. Few places convey so directly how the first Christian communities of the city buried and remembered their dead.

The cemetery takes its name from Flavia Domitilla, a woman of the imperial Flavian family of Vespasian, on whose land the earliest burial grounds were dug. Its oldest core, the so-called hypogeum of the Flavians, goes back to the late second century; over the following two hundred years family tombs grew together into a vast communal necropolis, extended downward and outward as space ran out. Christian tradition associates Domitilla with the new faith, though historians are divided on whether she was a Christian herself. Towards the end of the fourth century, under Pope Damasus, the basilica was built over the graves of Nereus and Achilleus; according to tradition, they were soldiers who had executed Christians before converting and being beheaded themselves. A surviving column from the altar canopy shows Achilleus at the moment of his execution, a rare subject in early Christian art. The church was forgotten in the early Middle Ages and brought to light again in the 1870s by the archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the pioneer of catacomb studies.

The painted chambers make the underground walk unforgettable. Among the frescoes are Christ seated among the apostles, the Good Shepherd, Noah's ark, Daniel among the lions and the story of Jonah, alongside images borrowed from the pagan world, such as Orpheus charming the animals with his lyre. In a small chamber behind the apse, a fourth-century painting shows Saint Petronilla leading a woman named Veneranda into paradise. Another burial chamber, decorated for a family of bakers or grain officials, shows the arrival and distribution of wheat in Rome. Rome itself, the capital of Italy and for centuries of a Mediterranean empire, holds dozens of catacombs along its ancient roads, but few are as extensive or as richly painted as this one.

Getting there

The catacombs lie on Via delle Sette Chiese, close to the ancient Via Ardeatina and the Appian Way, about 4 km south of the historic centre of Rome. Ciampino–G. B. Pastine International Airport (CIA) is about 10 km away, and Rome Fiumicino, the main international airport, about 25 km to the west. Roma Termini is the city's main railway station, from which the area is reached by city bus or metro and bus.