The Rome Catacombs, One by One

Six sites, one tariff, and a different closing day each. What is actually in each catacomb — and why your booking may name two of them.

Which catacombs open on which day

The Pontifical Commission staggers the closures so that something is always open. Read the grid the other way round and it explains most of what looks odd about tour listings: an operator running daily departures has to name more than one site.

Pick your day first and the choice of site often makes itself. If you are set on one particular catacomb, book Rome Catacombs tours that names it — and if you want the bone chapels in the same afternoon, a Rome Catacombs tour with Capuchin Crypts pairs the two.

San Callisto — the Crypt of the Popes

The largest and most visited of the Appian Way sites, and the one on the sheet's address: Via Appia Antica 110/126. Its galleries run for kilometres on several levels, and the section open to visitors leads to the Crypt of the Popes, where nine bishops of Rome from the third century were buried. Giovanni Battista de Rossi identified the chamber in 1854 from the inscriptions Pope Damasus had cut there in the 380s.

Opening directly off it is the crypt of St Cecilia, with a copy of Stefano Maderno's sculpture of the saint lying as she was said to have been found. Beyond are the Cubicles of the Sacraments, small family chambers whose third-century paintings are among the oldest Christian images anywhere. Visits are guided only, leave every half hour, run about 40 minutes and need a minimum of two people.

Domitilla — the only underground basilica

Domitilla sits on Via delle Sette Chiese, off the Appian Way, on land that belonged to Flavia Domitilla. The site dates its earliest galleries to about AD 120 and describes itself as the largest and oldest underground cemetery in the city. It is also the one most tours actually enter, because it is open six days a week and takes groups on a longer route than the others.

Its distinguishing feature is a semi-underground basilica — the only one in Rome — dedicated to the martyrs Nereus and Achilleus and to St Petronilla. You come up into it mid-visit, which is the moment most people remember. The two-hour walks here give more time in the galleries than any other guided catacomb visit you can book in Rome.

San Sebastiano — the catacomb that named the rest

The word itself starts here. The hollow beside the third-century basilica was known as ad catacumbas, "at the hollows", and the name spread from this one site to every Christian burial gallery in the world. Below the basilica are three painted pagan mausolea, preserved almost intact, and the triclia where pilgrims scratched invocations to Peter and Paul into the plaster in the third century.

The site is at Via Appia Antica 134 and runs guided visits of about 40 minutes, accompanied throughout by its own staff. Hours and admission are published by the basilica rather than the Commission and are quoted differently by different sources, so check the official website before you go. Several departures listed here visit San Sebastiano or Domitilla depending on the day.

Priscilla — the Greek Chapel and the earliest Marian image

North of the centre on Via Salaria, and the quietest of the four. Priscilla is where the after-hours departures go, and its reputation rests on painting: the Greek Chapel with its plaster mouldings and biblical scenes, and a fresco widely identified as the earliest known image of the Virgin and Child. Guided visits run about 45 minutes.

Priscilla closes on Mondays, adds a €2 supplement for booking online, and takes a closure in the second half of August. Because it is further out and less visited, the evening tours here feel closer to having the place to yourself than anything on the Appian Way.

Sant'Agnese and the sites you will not be offered

Sant'Agnese, on Via Nomentana beneath the basilica of the same name, is open to visitors and worth knowing about — but none of the departures listed here includes it, so you would go independently. Of the roughly sixty catacombs known under Rome, only a handful are open at all. The rest are sealed for conservation, and access is restricted to researchers working with the Commission.

That is not a loss to plan around. The open sites carry the Crypt of the Popes, the underground basilica, the oldest Christian painting and the birthplace of the word itself between them.

The Capuchin Crypt is not a catacomb

It appears on six of the departures listed here and it is worth being clear about what it is. The Museum and Crypt of the Capuchin Friars on Via Vittorio Veneto is an eighteenth-century chapel whose five small rooms are decorated with the bones of about four thousand friars — arranged into arches, rosettes and chandeliers, with robed skeletons standing in the niches.

It is not ancient, it is not underground in the catacomb sense, and it has nothing to do with the early Christian cemeteries outside the walls. What it does have is bones, in enormous quantity, which is what many visitors are picturing when they book a catacomb. If that is the image in your head, take a tour that pairs the two. What to expect underground explains why the catacomb galleries themselves are bare.

Why your tour may not name the catacomb in advance

Several listings say "San Callisto, San Sebastiano or Domitilla" and settle it on the day. That reads like vagueness and it is the opposite: it is how an operator keeps a daily departure running when each site shuts on a different weekday. The route, the guide and the time below ground are the same; the door changes.

If a specific catacomb matters to you — the Crypt of the Popes, or the underground basilica — pick a departure that names it. Rome Catacombs Tours shows the site each tour enters, and the history of the catacombs explains why the four differ so much in what survives.