While the pulsating Eternal City with its countless charms never fails to cast its spell on all visitors, there comes a point in every Roman sojourn when one aches for a brief interlude of monastic quiet and stillness, for the sweet music of silence.Ĭamille and I learned long ago to satisfy that intermittent urge for a spell of tranquility by taking a long leisurely walk out along the side of that legendary road – its original paving stones still in place in some stretches – that melancholy yet lovely thoroughfare flanked by pagan tombs with their Latin epitaphs, by fragments of statues and columns, by fields of wildflowers, by graceful umbrella pines and stately cypresses, that scenic highway to Capua and beyond. Whether drenched in the soft golden sun of morning or suffused with the ethereal pink light of evening, the old road that leads south from Rome offers a peaceful alternative to the urban din and commotion endlessly taking place within the towering Aurelian Walls. Sebastian – together with two of the Jewish grounds, are to be found along the fourth century B.C.Via Appia.Ī hike on the Appian Road is a never to be forgotten experience. Two of the most important Christian subterranean cemeteries – the Catacombs of St. Thus pagans, Jews, and Christians alike placed their cemeteries or mausolea along the sides of the many highways leading out of Rome, such roads as the Via Cassia, the Via Flaminia, the Via Salaria, the Via Latina, the Via Tiburtina and so on. The catacombs of the Jews and early Christians of Rome were burial grounds of course and, ipso facto, had to abide by the old Extra Muros law which ordered that all burials and entombments had to take place “outside the walls” of the city. Is a hike on the Via Appia the best way to reach the Catacombs? What will one experience along the way?
These are a story apart, a sui generis, terra sacra, which are not merely on any Roman top-ten list, but which constitute a must-see list solely of their own.Ģ. Today they come from the Americas, from all over Europe, from Scandinavia, from the Baltics, from Asia and Australia and lesser known points of the globe to behold, wide-eyed, the mighty Colosseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, the piazzas, the fountains, the wonders of the Vatican, and whatever else there is on their top-ten list.īut beneath all this unexampled splendor of Rome there sprawls the dark, dank, eerie, labyrinthine, city of the dead – the catacombs. In antiquity, eager visitors from Syria, Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, Greece, Libya, Ilyria, the Jewish diaspora and elsewhere in the Mediterranean basin trekked the plethora of roads leading to Rome to see and marvel at the Eternal City’s fabled sights and sites. Rome has been playing host to the world now for nearly 3,000 years. Are the Roman catacombs on your top ten list? You’ve both been to Italy around 100 times.
You and Camille wrote a brilliant, wide-ranging book, BELOW ROME: THE STORY OF THE CATACOMBS.
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