Roman Catacombs

Short post today!

My art history midterm is going to be killer next week, but I love the class for all of the cool places we get to go. Today, we went to the Mausoleum of Constantina (Constantine's oldest daughter) and Sant'Agnese, which were pretty cool, but after we finished at those two places our professor took us to the Catacombs of Priscilla, one of the 5 catacombs in Rome (out of 60) that you can actually visit. The idea of the catacombs is a little creepy, but it was really cool to see them! Catacombs are basically underground Christian cemeteries. Our professor really has a thing against the Paris catacombs and he doesn't consider them real catacombs, though. The catacombs we visited have mostly been excavated and looted by grave robbers, so there aren't very many places where you would still have bodies buried.

When this was a cemetery, those niches in the walls would have had bodies in them that would be sealed with terracotta or marble plaques in front.