Catacombe, Baby

We decided to walk to the catacombs.

Stop one: the supermarket in a super-sketchy neighborhood. Rome is covered in graffiti - it appears to be the new art form of the culture that once produced sculpture and Cicero. (Allison points out that a lot of Roman graffiti qualifies as art; I remain of the medieval mind that it is not.)

We passed the weeded tennis courts and dingy apartment complexes and BOOM: we entered a paradise. The paradise turned out to be the Via Appia Antica, or the Appian Way.

This is "the Queen of the Roads," one of the longest and oldest roads built by our Roman friends. Spartacus died here.

"Le catacombe," as they are called in Italian, sit under the beautiful countryside in Lazio. We couldn't take pictures in the catacombs, which date back to the 3rd century. Our guide was quick and efficient in guiding us through the tomb of more than 500,000 Christians. Burials began in the late 3rd century - nine popes and 56 martyrs lay in Le Catacombe di Santo Callisto.

Walking down into the catacombs, I was afraid that the pressure of 36 feet would start a panic attack. Instead, it felt peaceful down there. The walls are (surprisingly?) sound, the stone silent and somehow content.

The frescoes surprised me; their vitality is matched by their fading glory. Tombs were decorated with all kind of scenes - some of saints like Polycarp, others with near-Bacchanalian images of wine and lounging Romans.

500,000 dead. It felt a little bit like a family tomb.

On a lighter note, SPQR is everywhere here. Even when you pass a manhole, it is a manhole that expresses the wishes of the Senatus Populusque Romanus.

Le catacombe lie just outside the walls of Rome. You can see a hint of the ancient wall in this picture.

Via Appia Antica was a slice out of another world, a place where Horace and Cicero fled (maybe?) to think and to pick grapes and tease slaves. More than one friend said, on our two-hour walk there, "this doesn't even feel like Rome." I disagreed. This felt a lot like Rome.