Catacombs and Underground Rome, Semi-Private

What you do

Rome was not built in a day, and it was not built on empty ground either: wars, fires and floods meant the city kept being rebuilt on top of itself. This tour goes down through the layers, in a group of six at most.

It starts at the Basilica of San Clemente, which is three buildings stacked in one. The medieval church at street level has gold mosaics worth the visit on their own. Below it is an earlier church with frescoes that have survived since the eighth century, and below that a Roman house and a temple of Mithras, with the altarpiece of Mithras and the bull still in place.

Back up to the surface, then a taxi out beyond the ancient walls to one of the largest catacomb complexes in Rome, where persecuted Christians buried their dead. You go down into galleries lined with empty burial niches — emptied by Barbarian raids — and read the carvings and frescoes on the terracotta and marble that closed them, down to the pick-axe marks the gravediggers left in the tufa and the little oil lamps they worked by.

Photography is not allowed inside San Clemente or in the catacombs. Occasionally the catacombs require visitors to join an official site guide underground; your own guide stays with you and adds commentary wherever that is allowed.