The Catacombs in Rome
Collecting and displaying in the first Christian cemeteries
by Chiara Cecalupo
The Christian catacombs in Rome date from the end of the 2nd century to the beginning of the 5th century CE (Fiocchi Nicolai 2014) and can therefore be considered amongst the oldest sacred sites of Christianity, as well as the first monumental expression of the universal Christian religion that has been handed down through the generations. Their sacredness has been linked, over the course of time, firstly to their use as burial places, then to the presence of popular underground places of worship (basilicas and oratories) in connection with the tombs of the martyrs and, in modern times, to the revival of early Christian culture and the religiosity of their origins. Even today, the veneration and fascination with the roots of Christianity leads groups of pilgrims to expressly request not only a visit to the tunnels, but also permission to celebrate mass in the ancient semi-hypogean basilicas or even in specially prepared cubicles and underground areas, in order to receive the Eucharist in close contact with the tombs of the early Christians.
Over the centuries, these catacombs have been the focus of interest for religious scholars, treasure hunters, travellers and visitors of all kinds (on the history of the rediscovery of the Christian catacombs, see Ferretto 1942). However, despite the various ineffective laws to protect the catacombs that were enacted by the popes from the 16th century onwards (Ghilardi 2005), these sacred places have been used as a repository of relics of martyrs (more or less genuine), healing and sacred earth and materials, archaeological objects and Christian art of both intellectual and religious interest.
This has meant that the Rome catacombs (more than those in any other part of the Mediterranean), have for hundreds of years been plundered in the name of propagandistic dissemination of the early Christian and apostolic origins of the Roman Catholic Church. Only in recent decades, starting from the end of the 19th century, has there been a growing awareness of the catacombs as a sacred place, containing a collection of artistic, historical and religious value. With this change of direction, the phenomena of "return" of objects to underground sites and the establishment of permanent exhibitions within these monuments have also begun. After a brief historical overview, this essay focuses on the phenomenon of the musealization of objects in the catacombs, analysing both archival documents and some visible cases.
Sacred museums of artefacts from the catacombs
The history of the spoliation of the hypogeal Christian cemeteries in Rome developed hand in hand with the history of collecting Christian antiquities. In fact, it was the catacombs that provided epigraphic material to the first private collectors of the 15th and 16th centuries, who displayed it in the outer walls of their urban and country homes (Cecalupo 2020). With the general rediscovery of Roman catacombs in the second half of the 16th century and the spread of underground visits by clergy, scholars and antiquities dealers, the private homes of the city's elite began to be filled with inscriptions, coins, gilded glass and relics (Cecalupo 2020). Christian archaeology thus became worthy of collecting and objects from the catacombs were placed side by side with all kinds of works of art and antiquities.
This phenomenon of the removal and privatisation of the material contained in the catacombs continued throughout the following centuries, and flourished at least until the middle of the 19thcentury, when - as we shall see - contemporary papal legislation succeeded in putting a stop to it.
Two important exceptions in this panorama are the exhibition in the annexes of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere and the creation of the Vatican Sacred Museum.
One of the earliest examples of the public display of a collection of catacomb artefacts is attributed to Marco Antonio Boldetti (Heid 2012). Boldetti, canon of Santa Maria in Trastevere was, from 1706 until his death in 1749, the Custodian of the Relics and Cemeteries of Rome, i.e. the main authority in Rome for the control and exploration of the catacombs. During his work as Custodian, he explored all the Christian cemeteries in the city and systematically extracted an incredible number of relics and archaeological materials from them. Following the contemporary Roman fashion for inscriptions displayed in private courtyards and responding somewhat to the emerging demands of the new model of epigraphic museums in Italy (Mazzi 2008), Boldetti decided to display much of his rich collection of inscriptions from the catacombs in the atrium and sacristy of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Many of these inscriptions can still be seen today at the entrance to the church and give us an idea of what the first 'public' display of a collection removed from the underground Christian cemeteries was like.
Figure 1. Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome. Atrium.
Meanwhile, the birth of the first museum with a Christian theme dates from 1700 during the pontificate of Clement XI Albani (1700-1721). As soon as he was elected, Clement XI decided to set up the first ecclesiastical museum in the Vatican palaces, organised by Canon Francesco Bianchini, an exponent of a "scientific" historiography based mainly on archaeological and numismatic evidence. He was interested in antiquity as historical evidence, going beyond the limits of antiquarianism to archaeology, and transferred this attitude into his museum in the Vatican Belvedere area, in whose rooms the first Christian antiquities collections were displayed, embedded in the wall and intended as a narration of the dogmas, rites, customs and norms of the early Church. Bianchini choose many pieces from the Roman catacombs, especially inscriptions, as he always preferred materials that could be precisely dated or closely linked to significant places and events for the Church in the early centuries. Little information is available about the display of catacomb finds in the Ecclesiastical Museum, and already in 1716 the Ecclesiastical Museum was dispersed (Kochel, Sölch 2005).
The baton was picked up in the middle of the century by Pope Benedict XIV Lambertini (1740-1758) who, with the enlargement of the Vatican Library, decided to resume the project of an ecclesiastical museum, entrusting it to the Oratorian Giuseppe Bianchini. Bianchini considered ancient artefacts to be an essential basis for historical reconstruction, so much so that he strongly opposed the dispersal of Christian antiquities, seen as the only valid evidence of the beginnings of ecclesiastical history, especially those from the catacombs of Rome. Many objects (earthenware oil-lamps, ancient gems, coins, rings, weights, seals, fragmenta vitrea, and general antiquities with sacred subjects) were acquired by the pope and arranged by dividing the small antiquities into wooden and glass cabinets with gilded frames, without taking into account either the object’s provenience or the original topography. As for the inscriptions, they were walled in between the windows (Lega 2010). With the official opening of the Museo Sacro in 1757, the first sacred museum in Rome finally took shape in the Vatican, in which Christian antiquities were displayed as an encyclopaedic historical reconstruction of early Christianity for use by experts and scholars, based on a very large amount of material extracted from the catacombs (Cecalupo 2021).
Figure 2. The current aspect of the Vatican Museo Sacro (@museivaticani.va)
In the cases presented here, therefore, the collections of objects from the catacombs continue to be separated from the sacred sites to which they belong and to be placed in external collections of a more 'public' nature, in accordance with ideas of conservation and removal that have severely affected archaeological sites throughout the Mediterranean over the centuries.
Catacombs as sacred places and museums: a brief history
The first signs of a certain new sensitivity towards the very architecture of the catacomb as a "sacred container of sacred materials" can only be seen from the middle of the 20th century.
The catacombs and Christian archaeology became a political and cultural tool under Pope Pius IX from 1850 onwards, when the events of the Roman Republic placed the pontiff's sovereignty increasingly at risk. In this situation, papal propaganda insisted in various ways on the self-exaltation of the Christianity of Rome as the centre of the Catholic and Apostolic Church (Capitelli 2011). Christian antiquity, through excavations and studies of early Christian Rome, played a significant and relevant role in the cultural policy of Pius IX from the 1850s onwards. The pope promoted and financed considerable initiatives for the development of the discipline, through the work of the Jesuit Giuseppe Marchi and of his pupil Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the 'founder' of Christian archaeology as a scientific discipline. In addition to the countless catacomb excavations he financed, he established the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology for the study, investigation, exhibition and protection of the catacombs and Christian monuments, and the foundation of the Christian Museum and its Lapidarium in the Lateran Palace. Directly derived from the museological experience of the Christian Museum of Benedict XIV, and the completion of the first Lateran Museum nucleus planted by Pietro Ercole Visconti at the behest of Gregory XVI (1831-1846), the Lateran Christian Museum was created to collect all the Christian archaeological materials found during the excavations of the underground cemeteries and removed from their contexts (Utro 2006). It was configured as an appendix to the visit to the catacombs, now stripped of their material, and as an aid to the understanding of Christian antiquities, which could be better enjoyed, observed and preserved in the museum than in the galleries from which they came. This didactic intention of the Lateran Christian Museum, which strongly corresponded to Marchi's convictions on the subject of the relationship between art-, faith-, cultural and social-education, is also reflected in the arrangement of two rooms at the end of the main gallery. The two rooms were dedicated to the exhibition of large watercolour copies of the main paintings of the Christian catacombs, and chosen to best illustrate the art of the catacombs and for the evocative and edifying power of the iconographic themes, to complete the display of the large sarcophagi and epigraphic texts (Utro 2006).
This was turning point: the promotion of numerous new excavations led to an large influx of new finds, and the opening up of previously unknown cemetery areas, galleries, oratories and entire catacombs. Secondly, during the course of the century there was a religious revival of the spirituality of the catacombs. This was due to the pope’s declining temporal power (compared by the Vatican to the period of the pre-Constantine persecutions of early Christians), and to a cultural revival of early Christian religious imagery in the visual arts (Capitelli 2011), as well as in Catholic literature (the international success of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman's 1854 novel Fabiola or, the Church of the Catacombs is indicative).
New pilgrims were moving towards the Christian cemeteries in Rome, excavations were progressing, the Sacred and Lateran museums were receiving more and more material whose sacredness seemed to become increasingly significant. Similarly, in Europe, in Italy and also in the Papal States, sensitivity to archaeological contexts and their presentation grew considerably. In this period, in fact, we see the first decisions on the need to bring the most fragile or valuable archaeological materials from the catacombs back to museums but, at the same time, to bring back to the underground galleries the inscriptions, oil lamps and other finds that had been removed in the past.
While the practice of relocating in museums what historically belonged to the catacombs continued, the question finally arose of "returning" to the sacred places the funerary and liturgical materials that belonged to them. In carrying out this return operation, however, the catacombs were used as a sacred museum container in which the collection was arranged according to well-defined exhibition criteria. In order to understand what actually happened at this juncture, one should turn to the documents relating to the meetings of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, the body that now decided on this matter and put these decisions into practice.
In what follows, I will present selected excerpts from the reports and proceedings of these official meetings on the subject of the exhibition of finds in the catacombs. After presenting these parts of the documents, it will be possible to reflect on the characteristics of the phenomenon according to the guiding themes of the God's Collections project.
The documents are now kept in the archives of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology in Rome ; the chronology of the selected texts goes from the last years of the 19th century to the first decades of the 20th century. However, it is clear that the phenomenon of the display of the catacombs as museums of materials coming from them must have started a few decades earlier and is still very much alive today, both with new installations (cf. below), and with the maintenance of historical displays.
In the meeting of 9 April 1894, the commissioners discussed the arrangement of inscriptions and small objects in the catacombs of San Sebastiano sull'Appia and Ciriaca al Verano. First of all, "the referents propose that two more metal grill be made and padlocked to two of the arcosolii, in order to keep in them the small shards and stones now poorly kept and loose on the floor". Then "the Municipal Archaeological Commission is willing to hand over to our Commission all the Christian inscriptions found in the past years in the Agro Verano, in order to place them on the modern walls built last year in one of the entrances to the cemetery of Ciriaca" (all translations from Italian of the original documents are by the author).
Over the next few years, discussion centred on the large catacombs with adjoining external museums such as San Sebastiano, but it can certainly be said that the issue involved all the catacombs in Rome. On 28 January 1898, in fact, it is recorded that “All the inscriptions of the hypogeum of SS. Peter and Marcellinus below the Basilichetta in Torpignattara have been arranged; as have the inscriptions existing in the adjacent galleries and cubicles" and that "the arrangement of the marbles of the Cemetery of St Felicita" was requested.
From the beginning of the 20th century, the question of the relationship with the city's two Papal museums (the Museo Sacro Vaticano and the Museo Lateranense with its Lapidario) was perceived as much more pressing at a time when these institutions were undergoing a general reorganisation and expansion (Utro 2006). They seem to have long maintained a strong interest in acquiring material preserved in catacombs - especially the most fragile and valuable finds or even casts. This can be seen in the meetings of 7 July 1904, when “the Secretary requested that three small objects (a glass paste, a small sundial and a bone plate) be removed from the intact gallery of the Commodilla Cemetery to be placed in the Christian Museum of the Vatican Library', while 'Prof. Marucchi requested that casts be made of some of the principal inscriptions of the Cemeteries for the Lateran Museum'.
The story of a single inscription in 1910 shed light on the complex relationship with the Museums. On 24 June, the Commission decided “that the inscription found in the lapidary gallery and referring to Flavia Domitilla (CIL VI, 8924) be transferred to the Cemetery of Domitilla from whence it came, and be replaced by a classical inscription of lesser importance for us [...], and resolved that the inscription coming from the Vatican museum be placed in the building above the basilica with the other inscriptions coming from above ground”. The definitive move was decided on 15 December 1910.
While the tension between conservation in situ and removal for transfer to a museum is evident, the duality of the catacombs as a place of worship and at the same time as a container for an archaeological collection is also present. In the meeting of 25 April 1910, in fact, it was decided not only that “the relics believed to be those of a martyr named Alexander, kept in the Church of Wisdom [...] be removed by the Librarian and taken back to the Catacombs of Priscilla” but also that “the placement of plaques in places of excavation and especially for those to be placed in the Cemetery of Callisto” was necessary.
The question of placing explanatory plaques, one of the most representative teaching aids of museum displays, went hand in hand with the setting up of the inscriptions in the various catacombs.
On 25 February 1915, the session recalled the need to “place a declarative inscription in the galleries cut and deformed” and to “continue the arrangement of the inscriptions in the Cemetery of Domitilla”. On 25 April 1919, then, “At Ponziano it is not yet considered appropriate to place the tombstones in the new access amphitheatre, since there are still no closures to guarantee their safety”, while at San Sebastiano “the Christian tombstones have been taken over and will be placed there”. On the same occasion, the Römische Institut der Görres-Gesellschaft of the Teutonic Cemetery, a Vatican cultural institution and museum, which is still in the vanguard of the study of early Christian antiquities, was also approached, pointing out that "the Christian inscriptions of the Teutonic Cemetery should be returned to the catacombs and basilicas from which they were removed".
The return of the original objects to the catacombs and the original arrangement of these sacred places is therefore an important concern for the Pontifical Commission for Christian Archaeology, and this influences its relations with the other Vatican museum institutions.
Emblematic in this regard is the extract from the meeting of 28 November 1936 concerning relations with the Vatican Museums and the transport of objects from the catacombs to the Sacred Museum. In the presence of representatives of the Commission and the Museums, an order issued by the pope for the development of the Sacred Museum was discussed. This order involved the Pontifical Commission and the Vatican Museums, confusing their respective competences, in that it laid down three tasks:
“a) that a scientific catalogue of the Sacred Museum be prepared, b) that an inventory be made of the innumerable objects scattered in the cemeteries and adjoining rooms, c) that the selection and transfer to the Sacred Museum of all those objects (gold, bronze, real, ivory, terracotta, etc.) which serve to complete and enrich the collections existing there [in the Sacred Museum] be carried out”.
The discussion focused on the risky practice of removing materials from the catacombs and the small museums attached to them and bringing them to the Vatican. Those raised the problems of tracing the objects transferred for the sole purpose of making an inventory, of the large number of common objects found in the catacombs and unsuitable for museum display and, more generally, of the role of small local museums compared to the larger Museo Sacro. In fact, it was decided
“that once the inventory had been made, and the objects taken from the catacombs had been restored and reassembled as far as possible, they would be returned to their proper place; that notification would be given if any were found among the many objects needed to complete the collections of the Sacred Museum; that the work would not last more than two weeks [...].”
They made “observations on the compilation of the inventory for the objects still in the catacombs and for the countless fragments of very common objects, which are found in every part of the cemeteries, in the storerooms of museums and collections, in shops”. All the Commissioners explicitly reaffirm the duty and task of the Commission to safeguard the integrity of the intact galleries.
Finally, Committee member Nogara [of the Vatican Museums] goes back to affirming the usefulness and value of local museums, and the special value that the collections, warehouses and objects on site have”. He argues how “this is now universally accepted by scientific archaeologists; this without wishing to diminish the extraordinary importance of the great Museums and especially [...] of the Sacred Museum, pointing out however the danger of gathering in one place all or many specimens of the same types. The Secretary [...] also recalls the reasons why, in the first years of the Commission's life in 1852, a measure was taken to have inscriptions and furnishings removed from the cemetery of Pretestato; reasons that cannot be invoked today for any cemetery”. This was because all of them are effectively guarded and protected and the objects remain there safely and all of them are accessible without difficulty, but with the necessary caution, to those who wish to carry out serious studies and research.
When a Christian catacomb contains a collection
Now that we have outlined these individual episodes from the archival sources, we can begin to define how catacombs became a collection’s container.
After centuries of spoliation of the catacombs, therefore, the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology has undertaken with great fervour to preserve (if not actually restore) the objects originally preserved in them.
This is done with museum-like intentions and methods, so that these sacred places also become spaces for the conservation and display of collections. Certainly, the collections of objects that have been present for centuries in the Christian catacombs of Rome were not born from collecting intentions nor can they be read as a museum practice, at least until the twentieth century. In fact, the archaeological finds that we today admire on display in the hypogeal galleries, and that complete the tour of the pictorial and architectural beauty of these cemeteries, are only perceived by us today as antiquities and the sacred and venerable heritage of the first Christian community. In fact, at the time of their introduction into the catacombs, they were the object of daily use linked to burial, the frequenting of tunnels, the recognition of tombs and the performance of rites and liturgies. In fact, one can find scarce ceramic pottery, gilded glass and coins (used as signa sepulchri), sarcophagi, many oil lamps and an incredible quantity of funerary epigraphs at the end of the tombs, of every shape and chronology, in Greek and Latin. A separate argument should be made for the relics ex ossibus, which today are rare in the catacombs because they have been moved to churches over the centuries, but which continue to attract pilgrims in prayer. It seems to me, however, indicative of the change in meaning of these objects, that since the late nineteenth-century sources presented above, the Commissioners have taken care to provide the catacombs with explanatory captions.
Placing these objects back in the catacomb and managing their protection and visibility is an issue that we find addressed in the documents and that denotes a clear vision of these exhibitions. The objects are not relocated to the exact spots from which they were removed (which in most cases is impossible to determine owing to a lack of historical information), but are rather scattered in many areas of the monument in a standard way that is still visible today.
The inscriptions are in fact almost all inserted with iron pins into modern masonry, created in the last two centuries for reinforcement, to improve access, or to create new routes:
Figure 3. Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome (@Wikicommons CC)
Figure 4. Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome (@Wikicommons CC)
Figure 5. Catacombs of St Sebastian, Rome (@Wikicommons CC)
Figure 6. Catacombs of St Felicita, Rome (@PCAS)
This is probably due to avoid affecting or covering the original walls. Smaller materials, on the other hand, are stored in specially prepared arcosolia, where the objects are arranged and then protected from theft by a grille. A separate issue, as we shall see, are the semi-hypogean basilicas and the small halls in the basement used as museums for the catacombs.
The material we see in the catacombs today is all inventoried at the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology from the cataloguing campaigns of the first half of the twentieth century, which are also attested by the sources. This is obviously an indication of how these antiquities are beginning to be seen as part of a collection. In this sense, this realisation is certainly the end point of a process that was first centrifugal and then centripetal: the material in the catacombs first left the sacred place to which it belonged, following widespread and more or less lawful dislocations, to find space in religious museums but detached from the site of origin. The phenomenon of return is then very early compared to other cases, and modifies the very concept of the catacombs as a container not only of relics but also of a collection.
The result of this return phenomenon is the structuring of the different exhibition solutions visible today. First of all, there was a large number of catacomb archaeological material arranged during the 20th century in areas related to the catacombs but not directly underground. We can recognise a number of places set up as museums and now historically famous, near the most visited cemetery complexes. The main examples are the Museum of the Sarcophagi of St Sebastian, the Museum of Pretestato and the Museum of St Callistus in the so-called Tricora.
The present entrance to the catacomb of St Sebastian is located inside the right aisle of the cemetery basilica of the same name built in the 4th century over the underground cemetery. The original structure is only partially visible today (since the Baroque church was built on top of it (Ferrua 1990)), but the reconstructed remains of the right aisle are perfectly visible, having become the museum of sarcophagi since 1932. Hundreds of sculptural and epigraphic fragments from excavations in the area and the catacomb are displayed here, embedded in the wall or lying on the ground. The visitor can therefore visit the collection before starting the underground tour:
Figure 7. Catacomb of St Sebastian, Rome. Museum of the Sarcophagi.
Moreover, this case is a more structured evolution of the very common practice of the early 20th century of decorating the walls of the catacomb entrances with sculptural pieces of hypogeal origin but of little value, according to a centuries-old exhibition practice in Rome, and still visible today:
Figure 8. Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome. Entrance hall.
In 1925, the Commission for Sacred Archaeology succeeded in building a structure in the underground area of the Pretestato catacomb on the Appian Way to preserve and study the sculptural heritage recovered from the catacomb, which lay abandoned along the galleries and exposed to more or less legal removal. The building was structured like a Roman domus with a large four-sided portico facing a small square courtyard with a fountain in the centre. The fragments were arranged along the corridors of the atrium, in separate groups according to aesthetic and thematic similarities and reassembled, when possible, into sarcophagi, which were then placed on small bases in the garden. After a turbulent history, the museum has recently been restored and revalorised as part of the musealisation of the site:
Figure 9. Museum of Pretestato, Rome. (@catacombeditalia.va)
The sculpture collection of the Museum of St. Callistus is housed in one of the two triapsidal buildings in the basement of the catacomb, known as the "tricòra", where the great excavations and discoveries of the Callisto cemetery began in the mid-19th century. In honour of Pius IX’s contribution to Christian archaeology, the Commission decided on 7 March 1878 to adapt the area for use as a sacred museum of the inscriptions and sculptures found in the area. For this purpose, the help of Monsignor Joseph Wilpert was requested, who took a long time to collect and study the sculptural fragments left along the cemetery galleries of the catacombs and, from 16 March 1921, began to arrange the inscriptions still lying scattered in Callisto, and particularly the fragments of sarcophagi piled up in the western trichora. Wilpert carried on with the reassembly of many sarcophagus fragments, from time to time left at Callistus or brought to the Lateran; the fragments of little value were stored separately; the inscriptions and worked fragments were displayed on the walls of the trichora and other parts of the catacombs. On November 11, 1922, the arrangement of the finds on the walls of the eastern trichora in St. Callistus was finally completed (Mazzei 2009).
Figure 10. Trichora in the catacomb of St. Callisto in its early appearance (@PCAS)
The conservative and innovative zeal of the Commission of Sacred Archaeology for these museums of the catacombs in external structures is still active. In particular, the new Museum of the Catacomb of Domitilla (Bisconti, Ravasi 2017) and the Museum of Priscilla, are among the most recent and valid examples of the setting up of an archaeological collection of finds from the catacombs inside a large semi-hypogeous cemetery basilica . Between 1890 and 1906 archaeological excavations in the basement of the catacomb of Priscilla brought to light the foundation walls of the basilica of San Silvestro, a hypogeal basilica annexed to the catacombs and well known from the sources. As is typical of the fervour of restoration in that period, the basilica was rebuilt in 1907 on the site of the foundation walls. From the very beginning it was used to store archaeological materials found during excavations, piled up inside and displayed along the walls without any precise criteria other than purely random and aesthetic. During the 2013 restoration campaign (Bisconti, Giuliani, Mazzei 2013), the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology was able to study in detail the stone artefacts preserved in the basilica for over one hundred years (about 700 marble fragments of the early 3rd and mid-4th century). The Commission restored and rearranged 471 fragments along the basilica atrium walls, taking care not to affect its liturgical use. For this sort of atrium annex, which was built in the first half of the 4th century for cemetery purposes and whose floor was completely occupied by burials, the archaeological evidence was left visible through glass floor plates:
Figure 11. Museum of Priscilla, Rome. (@Mupris.net)
The most recent installation efforts have been concentrated mainly in places that are annexed to the catacombs but not directly underground, also to cope with the problems of humidity and light that cannot be solved in the catacombs.
Hypogeal settings tend to be the historical ones, i.e. closed arcosols with grates to deliver smaller objects and inscriptions on modern brick and concrete walls. There are, however, a few hypogeal sites that are exceptions, among which are the area of the piazzola of San Sebastiano and the triclinium of the hypogeum of the Acilii of the catacomb of Priscilla.
The catacombs of San Sebastiano present various museum solutions starting with the already mentioned museum of sarcophagi at the entrance of the complex. In addition, near the large mausoleums of the so-called piazzola, which were buried in order to build a memorial of Peter and Paul in the 3rd century CE, there is a gallery with neon-lit wall showcases, in which small finds are kept and, above all, pieces of ancient wall painted in red with devotional graffiti of ancient pilgrims invoking the Apostles, discovered by chance in the 1920s (Ferrua 1990). These finds, which are very important for the history of the catacomb of St Sebastian, can therefore be enjoyed by visitors in the sacred complex to which they belong:
Figure 12. Catacomb of St Sebastian, Rome. Showcase (@Wikimedia CC)
Figure 13. Catacomb of St Sebastian, Rome. Devotional graffiti (@Wikimedia CC)
A part of the Hypogeum of the Acilii, recently restored after a major campaign of restoration by the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology (Giuliani, Mazzei 2016), is the triclinium, a vaulted room covered in hydraulic mortar and mosaic, directly communicating with the galleries. Parts of architectural marbles, sarcophagi and inscriptions found in the area of the catacomb and of great historical value for the complex are displayed in the side brick walls. In addition, the room was equipped with new lighting. It has thus become one of the best museum points in the catacomb, but at the same time a place set up for celebrating mass by larger or smaller groups.
Conclusion
The trajectory of the phenomenon of the use of the catacombs as a sacred place for visitors and pilgrims is still in motion. For the future, in fact, the outlook is similar and continuous, and the trend can be expected to continue with the increasingly massive return of archaeological finds to the relevant catacombs. Given the difficult climatic conditions present inside the cemetery galleries and despite the ever-improving conservation technologies implemented to protect the hypogeal finds, we foresee an increase in museum exhibitions inside structures attached to the catacombs (such as entrance halls or semi-hypogeal churches) and not directly inside the galleries, as witnessed since the end of the 19th century. However, it is highly probable that the hypogeal exhibitions will not be dismantled in the future, so as not to make the same mistakes of breaking with the original context that were made in past centuries.
Basically we can foresee that, thanks to this increased awareness of the link between artefact and site, the catacombs will be increasingly configured as a sacred place where the collections of Christian archaeology pertaining to them are displayed.
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Mazzei 2009 = B. Mazzei, Giuseppe Wilpert e il Museo delle sculture di San Callisto, in S. Heid (ed.), Joseph Wilpert archeologo cristiano, Città del Vaticano 2009, pp. 485-502.
Mazzi 2008 = M. C. Mazzi, In viaggio con le Muse, Firenze 2008.
Utro 2006 = U. Utro, Dalle catacombe al museo: storia e prospettive del Museo Pio Cristiano, in Bollettino dei Monumenti, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie, 25 (2006), pp. 397-415.
Chiara Cecalupo is CONEX-Plus-Marie Curie Fellow at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She received her PhD in Museology and History of Early Christian Archaeology at the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana in Rome. As a researcher, she has collaborated with several universities and museums in Italy, Malta and Europe. Her main research focus is on the rediscovery of early-Christian catacombs in the Mediterranean basin. She has a strong record of publication in history of archaeology, antiquarian studies and reception of antiquities from the 16th to the 19th century.
Chiara Cecalupo acknowledges support from the CONEX-Plus programme funded by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No.801538.
