Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The Catacombs of San Sebastiano are at via Appia Antica 136, in Rome, under the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura, just past the third milestone of the regina viarum and about 800 meters further on than the Catacombs of San Callisto for those coming from the city. You can get there by ATAC buses 118 and 660, stop Basilica S. Sebastiano, or by the 218 getting off at Fosse Ardeatine and walking 300 meters. The 118 is the line that goes down from Circus Maximus past the Baths of Caracalla and then turns onto the Appia. The 660 connects Arco di Travertino metro station on Line A. The 218 comes from the San Giovanni area and passes the junction of Domine Quo Vadis. Visits are only made with a guide from the complex. The visit lasts half an hour and is conducted in Italian, English, French, Spanish and German. The official sales channel of the Holy See lists €12,00 for the full ticket, that is €10,00 plus €2,00 booking fee, and €9,00 for the reduced ticket, that is €7,00 plus €2,00. Reductions apply to children aged 7 to 16, to archaeology, architecture and art history students up to age 25, and to priests and religious. Entry is free for children under six, for persons with disabilities and their companion, for licensed tour guides, and for one teacher every 15 paying visitors. The opening hours listed on the official website run from Tuesday to Sunday, from 9.15 to 17.15, with last entry at 16.45. The complex stays closed for some weeks in December, on December 25 and on January 1. The weekly day off is Monday. For any doubts you can call 06 7850350 or write to info@catacombe.org before setting off. Photography and video recording are not allowed inside the galleries. The basilica above has its own hours and free entry: 8.15-18.00 from October to March, 8.15-19.00 from April to September.

If Rome's Christian underground interests you beyond this single visit, the big picture is on the page dedicated to the Catacombs of Rome, which collects all the visitable hypogea in the city.

How Much It Costs to Enter the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The ticket includes the guided tour, which is not an extra and cannot be refused: there is no independent visit here. The full price published by the official booking channel is €12,00, of which €10,00 is the entry itself and €2,00 the booking fee. The reduced ticket is €9,00 with the same structure, €7,00 plus €2,00. The categories entitled to it are listed precisely: minors between 7 and 16 years old, school groups in the same age range, university students of archaeology, architecture and art history up to 25 years old with certification, priests, religious and seminarians.

Where to buy official tickets. The ticket office is on site, and the two online sales channels listed by the Catacombs of San Sebastiano office are the entry ticket with guided tour on GetYourGuide and the official page of Omnia Vatican & Rome. If you find the ticket elsewhere, you are buying from a reseller that is not one of them. Verified on September 28, 2026 after a direct report from the office.

Free admission is more generous than people think. Children up to and including six years old don't pay, nor do people with disabilities together with their companion, students of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, members of the religious community that looks after the complex, one accompanying teacher for every 15 paying visitors, licensed tour guides, or researchers holding authorization from the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology. Groups of more than 35 people are entitled to two free admissions. Anyone traveling with a school group would do well to get these numbers in black and white before leaving, because at the ticket office, with 40 kids in line, nobody feels like arguing about rules.

€10 for a half-hour visit seems like a lot until you consider that the price covers a guide who talks, a lighting system that keeps a fragile monument alive, and the upkeep of galleries dug into tufa that would collapse without maintenance. The Roman catacombs are among the few places in Rome where the ticket really does go toward keeping the monument standing, not toward raising revenue. Those who turn up their noses at the price usually have no idea what it costs to shore up a third-century gallery.

Hours, Closures and Booking for the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The official website lists opening hours from Tuesday to Sunday, 9.15 to 17.15, with the last entry set for 16.45. In practice, if you show up at the gate after four and three-quarters in the afternoon, you risk being left outside. The complex has an annual closure of a few weeks in December, and it stays closed on December 25 and January 1. According to the official website, the weekly day off is Monday, and calling 06 7850350 the day before is still the quickest way to avoid wasting your morning.

Booking is simpler than it seems: on most days of the year you just arrive, buy your ticket, and wait for the group in your own language to depart, which forms gradually. In peak periods, that is spring, long weekends and Jubilee weeks, booking in advance through the official channel avoids the wait. Departures don't follow a strict schedule: visitors are gathered by language and then the group leaves. This means that in the low season, with few people around, you might wait 20 minutes for an Italian group to form, and that in high season you could leave within five minutes as part of a group of 40.

A professional's tip: if there are two or three of you and there's a line, ask whether an English or Spanish group leaves first and, if you speak a little of the language, join it. The guides at the complex tell the same route in every language, the substance doesn't change, and you save half an hour of waiting. The opposite applies to those traveling with elderly people or young children: it's better to use your native language, because underground, with the echo and the dim light, following an explanation in a foreign language is twice as tiring.

How to Get to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The most orderly option is the 118, which leaves from the Piramide and Circo Massimo area, runs along Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, exits through Porta San Sebastiano and continues on the Appia Antica, stopping first at Domine Quo Vadis, then San Callisto, then the basilica. It's a route the drivers know by heart, and Romans use it as an archaeological shuttle. The 218 takes a different route, coming down from San Giovanni along Via Ardeatina and stopping at the Fosse Ardeatine, 300 meters on foot from the complex, while the 660 connects to Arco di Travertino station on Metro A and is very convenient for those staying along the Appio-Tuscolano corridor. The stop is called Basilica S. Sebastiano, and the complex's gate is a few steps away.

Anyone arriving by car needs to know something that doesn't show up on maps: the Appia Antica, on the stretch between Porta San Sebastiano and the basilica, is a narrow, basalt-paved road with dry-stone walls and no sidewalk. Driving there is awkward, parking even more so. On weekdays there are some parking areas along the road and near the complex, but they are limited and fill up early in the morning. On Sundays and holidays, the stretch is generally reserved for pedestrians and cyclists, which makes the walk beautiful and the car useless.

The solution I've been recommending for years to anyone with only one day: take the bus to the basilica, visit, and then walk or bike south along the Appia. Bike rentals are available in the Parco dell'Appia Antica area, and their hours change with the seasons. Alternatively, you can always head back with the 118. Anyone taking a taxi should keep in mind that the meter runs on the Appia and that the paved stretch can't be driven at normal speed.

Why They Are Called the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, and Why All the Others Are Called Catacombs

Here is the fact that makes this place different from any other underground cemetery in the world: the word catacomb was born at this exact address. In antiquity the site was known as ad catacumbas, a phrase scholars trace back to the Greek katà, near, and kymbe, cavity: literally, near the cavities. The cavities were not a metaphor. Before it was used for burials, this stretch of the Appian Way was an area of pozzolana quarries, and the digging had left the ground marked by a striking depression, still visible to the naked eye when you walk along the road near the complex.

The place name was an address, exactly the way we say "at the quarries," "at the curve," "under the bridge." Then something happened that the history of words records often: the name of one particular place became the name of a universal category. When, starting in the 16th century, the other Christian underground cemeteries of Rome were rediscovered, forgotten for centuries, the only one that had never been forgotten was this one, and its local name ended up designating all of them. From there the word traveled: catacombs of Paris, catacombs of Naples, catacombs of Alexandria, Egypt, catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo. None of those places has anything to do with a Roman pozzolana quarry, yet all of them carry the name of this depression on the Appian Way.

The title of San Sebastiano, by contrast, is late, early medieval. For all of the third century and beyond, the cemetery was called in memoria apostolorum, memory of the apostles, because of its link to Peter and Paul. The martyr who today gives the whole site its name came later, when his tomb became the center of pilgrimage and the basilica above took his title. It is a detail that reverses the mental order most visitors bring with them when they arrive: this is not a Christian cemetery that at some point hosted the apostles, it is an apostolic site that at some point took the name of a martyr buried inside it.

Our opinion: the most overlooked part of this visit is the one that takes place on the surface, before you even go down. Stop for 30 seconds on the forecourt, look at how the ground slopes down toward the valley, and you will have understood where a word that half the planet uses today comes from. It is the only free lesson the complex offers, and almost no one listens to it.

In memoria apostolorum: Peter and Paul Under the Appian Way

The heaviest question in the whole complex is this one, and it has to be told without sugarcoating, because it is also the most misunderstood. The Depositio martyrum, a Roman calendar from the mid-4th century, records for June 29 the commemoration of Peter in catacumbas and that of Paul on Via Ostiense. The Martyrology of Jerome, a text from the 5th century, on the same date commemorates Peter at the Vatican, Paul on the Ostiense, and utrumque in catacumbas, Tusco et Basso consulibus: both here, under the consulship of Tusco and Basso, that is, in 258.

What the Ancient Sources Really Say

The two lines you have just read are all that antiquity has left us in explicit form. There is no document saying when the relics would have arrived, who would have brought them, where they would have been placed, or when they would have left again. There is a consular date and a preposition. On that basis, starting in the 17th century, an entire literature has been built.

The Translation Hypothesis and Other Readings

The classic reading, the one you will find in a large part of popular books, is the translation: during the persecution of Valerian, in 258, the relics of the two apostles would have been moved here to shield them from imperial confiscation, and later returned to their original sites in the early 4th century. A second reading, widely followed among scholars today, interprets those lines as the establishment of a joint cult of the two apostles in this place, without any transfer of bones. A third hypothesis links the memoria to a property of the Christian community in which the two apostles were already venerated together before 258. None of the three has been proven. Anyone who tells it to you as established fact is oversimplifying, and in Roman popular writing, oversimplification on this point is almost a local tradition.

The Triclia and the 600 Graffiti

What, by contrast, is material, measurable, and right under your feet is the triclia: a covered, porticoed hall carved into the artificial terrace created around the middle of the third century, where devotees held funeral banquets in honor of the dead and the martyrs. The plastered walls of that room preserve hundreds of graffiti, more than 600 according to current counts, scratched between the second half of the third century and the early fourth century, with invocations to Peter and Paul. Not two or three isolated pilgrims: a steady flow of people who came here, ate, drank, and wrote the name of the two apostles on the plaster, asking for intercession.

Next to the triclia, the excavations uncovered a marble-covered edicola, which archaeologists consider the devotional center of the area, and an indoor room with a well for water, essential for banquets. In the first half of the fourth century, this whole complex of rooms was buried to build the embankment on which the Constantinian basilica rose. That is why the triclia is seen today cut off at the top: the church grew up over it, quite literally. When the guide takes you there, look up at the point where the plaster stops, and you'll understand the whole stratigraphy of the site in a second.

In our view, the debate over the bones of the apostles is fascinating but sterile, because it will never be settled. The 600 graffiti, however, are huge and definitive proof of something else, much more interesting: in the third century, at a time when being Christian in Rome was dangerous, people came here en masse to pray to Peter and Paul. It doesn't matter if there were relics underneath. What matters is that hundreds of people believed there were, and left their names scratched on the wall. That is the document, not the legend.

The Piazzola and the Three Pagan Mausoleums of the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The archaeological highlight of this complex is not Christian: it is pagan, and it is better preserved than almost all the rest. It is called the piazzola, and it is a roughly circular space that was originally an open-air pozzolana quarry. When the quarry was abandoned, toward the end of the second century, three mausoleums were carved into its walls, decorated the way a well-to-do house of the time was decorated: painted plaster, stucco, floors, inscriptions. They were not cheap tombs, and they were not Christian tombs. They were the burial places of families and associations of imperial Rome.

The Mausoleum of Marcus Clodius Hermes

The first, on the right, belongs to Marcus Clodius Hermes, who had his name carved on the facade so that it would last. It has: 18 centuries later, we are still reading it, and that says something about the effectiveness of Roman epigraphy as a tool of memory. On the outside, the tomb preserves paintings of funerary banquets and a scene that scholars connect with the miracle of the possessed man of Gerasa, one of the oldest figurative documents of that Gospel story in a Roman setting. Inside there are inhumation burials, more paintings, and a vault decorated with a Gorgon head: the Medusa of the textbooks, a classic apotropaic motif that in Roman tombs served to keep evil and intruders away.

There is one thing about this mausoleum that popular accounts always skip: the coexistence of Gospel scenes and pagan motifs in the same tomb is not a contradiction, it was the normal state of those years. Rome at the end of the second century was not divided into two teams wearing different jerseys. Families were mixed, symbols overlapped, and the same painters' workshop worked for clients of every faith.

The Mausoleum of the Innocentiores

The second mausoleum belonged to a funerary collegium, that is, a mutual aid association whose members paid regular dues to secure a decent burial. The name of the collegium, the Innocentiores, appears in the inscriptions. They were ordinary people, craftsmen, freedmen, small shopkeepers, who organized themselves so as not to end up in a common grave outside the city gates. The tomb has a descenso, that is, an access staircase, with a vault decorated with stucco of remarkable quality, and in some niches there are inscriptions written in Greek letters but in the Latin language: the way multiethnic Rome actually spoke and wrote in those years, a city where the alphabet and the language did not always match.

This is also where one of the most cited documents of the complex appears: the graffito with the fish, a symbol that comes from the Greek acrostic of the words meaning Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, placed next to an anchor. These are signs that in a second phase that pagan mausoleum was also used to bury Christians. The coexistence, underground, was much closer than the popular version suggests: in the same room you move from the Gorgon to the fish without any break.

The Mausoleum of the Ax

The third, on the left, takes its name from the tool carved on the outside, an ax that often appears in Roman funerary formulas in connection with the consecration of the monument. The interior decoration is made of grapevine tendrils growing from kantharoi, the two-handled vessels of the Dionysian repertoire, set on painted false pilasters. It is the most elegant of the three and the least told, because it offers the guide neither a famous name nor a Christian symbol to explain. That is a shame, because the quality of the wall painting is high, and the plant repertoire is the one that will pass, almost unchanged, into Christian decoration of the following century.

Around the middle of the third century, the entire small square was buried to create an embankment at a higher level, and on that new surface the triclia, the marble edicule, and the room with the well came into being. Then, in the first half of the fourth century, that level was also buried to make room for the Constantinian basilica. Three cities stacked on top of each other in 150 years, with the houses of the dead becoming a square and the square becoming a church. If you have a guide who knows their stuff and the patience to listen, this sequence is the clearest lesson in stratigraphy you can get in Rome without enrolling in a university course.

The Martyrs of the Catacombs of San Sebastiano: Sebastian, Quirinus, Eutychius

Ancient sources document three martyrs buried in this cemetery on the via Appia: Sebastian, Quirinus, and Eutychius. Their names appear in the Notula oleorum, an early medieval catalog of the oils collected at the tombs of the Roman saints. However, the pilgrim itineraries of the early Middle Ages do not mention Eutychius, because his burial place was inconvenient to reach. It is an almost bureaucratic detail that tells you better than 1,000 pages how pilgrimage logistics worked back then, with fixed routes, limited times, and selected stops.

Sebastian, the Martyr Who Survives the Arrows

The Depositio martyrum records Sebastian's deposition and burial on January 20, in catacumbas. The ancient sources do not agree with one another about the man. Saint Ambrose, at the end of the fourth century, says he was from Milan and was martyred in Rome under Diocletian. The passio of the fifth century makes him a soldier born in Narbonne, Gaul, to a family from Milan. These are two different traditions, and the second is clearly later and more romanticized.

The scene everyone knows, the young man tied to a post and pierced by arrows, is, according to the same passio, not the end of the story but its halfway point. Sebastian survives the arrows. He is rescued and nursed, returns before Diocletian to denounce the persecutions to his face, and at that point is beaten to death in the Palatine hippodrome, with his body thrown into the Cloaca Maxima so that there would be neither tomb nor cult. The body stops along the way. The matron Lucina recovers it and takes it to be buried right here, on the via Appia. The relics remained in the catacomb until the ninth century, when the threat of Saracen raids led to their being moved inside the walls. Today they are back on the via Appia, in the chapel dedicated to the saint inside the basilica.

Quirinus, the Bishop Who Came from Pannonia

Quirinus was bishop of Siscia, a city in Roman Pannonia that is today called Sisak and is located in Croatia. Tradition places his martyrdom at the beginning of the fourth century, by drowning, with a millstone tied around his neck. His relics were taken to Rome and placed in the mausoleum behind the basilica's apse, the structure they call the Platonia here. The sources place the translation between the end of the fourth century and the first decades of the fifth century. However, the documentation does not agree on the precise dating, and it is best to treat this as tradition, not as a certain date. In the eighth and ninth centuries, part of the relics took other routes, and fragments of the cult of Quirinus can still be found today in more Italian churches.

Eutychius, the Martyr Whose Name Is All We Know

We know practically nothing about Eutychius except that his tomb existed and was identified during the excavations, in a landslide-prone area of the catacomb. What remains of him is the poem that Pope Damasus I had carved in his honor at the end of the fourth century, now on display in the basilica: a slab inscribed with letters designed by Furius Dionysius Filocalus, the court calligrapher who created for Damasus an epigraphic alphabet recognizable at a glance, elegant and with pointed serifs.

One observation: of the three martyrs, the one who will stay with you is not Sebastian, whom you already know from a thousand paintings and just as many covers. It is Eutychius, whose trade, family, and year we don't know, and who exists for us only because a poet pope wrote some verses over him. The catacomb is full of people like this: names without a biography, saved by chance by a slab of marble. That is why these places move even those who don't believe.

How Many Levels and Galleries the Catacombs of San Sebastiano Have

An apparently simple question, with a less simple answer. The cemetery's original levels were four. The first, the most superficial, is almost entirely destroyed by tampering and collapses over the centuries. The structure that the excavations have been able to reconstruct, and that is presented today, is laid out on three levels of galleries. It has cubicles, arcosolia, and loculi arranged according to the typical pattern of Roman underground cemeteries: narrow, high corridors, walls pierced in several tiers, and family burial chambers at the intersections.

The visiting route, however, covers only a minimal portion of it. A half-hour guided tour doesn't take you through kilometers of galleries: it takes you along a loop that touches the strong points and leaves everything else in the dark. This applies to all Roman catacombs, and to these as well as to the Catacombs of San Callisto a little further up the same road. It's not a commercial trick: it's a matter of conservation and safety. Galleries not open to the public are often unstable, without lighting, and in some stretches flooded.

There is also a particularity that sets this complex apart from all the other Christian hypogea in the city. Roman catacombs disappeared after the early Middle Ages: buried, forgotten, rediscovered only starting in the sixteenth century with the explorations that opened the age of Christian archaeology. These did not. Here the basilica above kept functioning without interruption, pilgrims kept coming down, and the thread of memory never broke. They are considered among the very few Christian cemeteries in Rome that have always remained accessible. Walking in here means walking through a place that no generation, in 18 centuries, has ever lost sight of.

This continuity comes with an archaeological cost. A cemetery never forgotten is also a cemetery never sealed, and so it has been stripped, reused, restored, repainted and reworked for 1,700 years. If you're after the intact integrity of the paintings, go to Priscilla or Domitilla. If you're looking for the continuity of devotion, which is rarer, stay here.

What you really see on the visit to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

I'll list the route in the order you meet it, so you know what to expect in that half hour and don't end up chasing the guide, wondering where you've ended up.

Entering from the nave of the ancient basilica

You enter from the right nave of the ancient basilica, restored over the remains of the Constantinian building. On the left you can see the communication arches with the central nave of the current church, walled up in the thirteenth century, and the exterior of the apse of the Chapel of the Relics. Along this space are gathered whole and fragmentary sarcophagi, largely from the fourth century, recovered from the excavations. Look at the lids and sides: many preserve the repertoire of the so-called strigil style, the curved grooves that imitate the motion of a scraper, which was the economical solution for mid-range patrons. The luxury sarcophagus, the one carved with figures on all sides, was another price.

The Cubicle of Jonah

From a staircase you descend to the galleries and cubicles. The most important painted piece on the route is the Cubicle of Jonah, with paintings from the late fourth century that develop the prophet's cycle in four scenes: Jonah thrown into the sea by the sailors, swallowed by the sea monster, cast up on the shore, and finally lying under the castor plant. It is the biblical story favored by early Christian iconography, and the reason is transparent: it speaks of being swallowed and of coming out of the dark, which in an underground cemetery is not an abstract theme. Like all his colleagues, the painter borrows a pagan visual scheme, that of the shepherd lying under the pergola, and fills it with new meaning.

The crypt of San Sebastiano

Next you reach the crypt of San Sebastiano, restored in modern times, with a table altar built on the site of the ancient one, of which traces of the base remain. Here the martyr's tomb was the center of gravity of pilgrimage for centuries, and the shape of the space, widened compared with the surrounding galleries, tells exactly this: it was dug out to make room for the faithful. The relics are no longer down here, but above, in the chapel dedicated to the saint inside the basilica.

The piazzola, the mausoleums and the triclia

From the crypt the route passes to the piazzola with the three pagan mausoleums, which is the moment when the visitor understands they are inside a cemetery much older and much more composite than they thought, and then climbs to the triclia with its graffiti. This is the central sequence of the visit, the one that makes the ticket worth it. Ask the guide to point out at least one legible graffito: when you make out the name PETRE scratched freehand into third-century plaster, the history of the Church stops being a chapter in a textbook.

The ambulacrum, the inscriptions and the model

Continue into the ancient ambulacrum that wraps around the apse of the Constantinian basilica, where a collection of inscriptions and a model that puts together the mausoleums, the triclia and the basilica are displayed. That model is the piece I recommend looking at most calmly of the whole route, and almost always it's the one the group rushes past: it is the only moment when the stratigraphy of the complex becomes understandable to the naked eye, without effort of imagination. If you have two extra minutes, stop there and let the others go ahead.

The Platonia and the Chapel of Honorius III

Finally, you go down into the Platonia, a structure built after the basilica, set behind the apse, which for centuries was believed to be the temporary burial place of the two apostles. Excavations at the end of the 19th century made clear that it is the Mausoleum of Quirinus. On the right, the chapel of Honorius III opens off the vestibule of the mausoleum, with a cycle of 13th-century paintings: Peter and Paul, the Crucifix, figures of saints, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Madonna and Child. It is good-quality medieval Roman painting, often overlooked because it comes at the end of the tour, when attention has waned.

On the left is an apsed mausoleum with an altar built against the apse, and on the left wall the graffito domus Petri, which is believed to allude to a burial dwelling of the apostle. Two words scratched on a wall that have supported a tradition for 1,700 years. It's fair to say that in the history of Roman Christianity, few inscriptions have carried as much weight with as little ink.

The Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura, above the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The church you enter to go underground is worth the trip on its own, and it's free. It's worth telling its history in stages, because the most common misunderstanding concerns its age.

From the Basilica Apostolorum to the church of Scipione Borghese

In the first half of the 4th century, Constantine had a large basilica built here, called the Basilica Apostolorum, with a deambulatory plan known as circus-style, meaning the nave runs around the apse to form a ring. This layout is found in other Roman imperial foundations of the same period, almost always tied to suburban cemeteries. It was a large building, about 70 meters long and roughly 30 meters wide, with three naves divided by piers with brick arches.

In 826, the relics of Sebastian were taken to the Vatican out of fear of Saracen raids, and the church suffered serious damage. Pope Nicholas I rebuilt it between 858 and 867. In the 13th century, care passed to the Cistercians, and the altar was reconsecrated by Pope Honorius III. The building you see today, however, dates from the 17th century. It was commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli Borghese, nephew of Paul V and one of the most formidable patrons of Baroque Rome, and work began toward the end of the first decade of the 17th century. The design is by Flaminio Ponzio. After his death, the project was completed by Giovanni Vasanzio, that is, the Flemish Jan van Santen, and the facade was finished in 1612-1613, as the dedicatory inscription with the cardinal's name recalls.

Anyone who enters expecting an early Christian church is caught off guard. The single nave, the wooden ceiling, the high light are those of a Counter-Reformation church. The ancient basilica didn't disappear, it shrank: the Constantinian central nave became today's church, and the side aisles remain below and around it, partly readable right along the visitor route through the catacombs. That's why you go down from there.

The facade, the portico and the wooden ceiling

The facade is divided into two orders. The lower one is a portico of three arches with four pairs of spolia columns, Ionic capitals and granite shafts: reused ancient material, as Rome has always done, and as the 17th century continued to do without embarrassment. The upper order has pairs of pilasters and three rectangular windows, and it ends with a sober, almost severe line that in Rome in 1613 signaled cardinal good taste rather than lack of means.

Inside, look up. The carved wooden ceiling was made by Annibale Durante after a design by Vasanzio, with the martyrdom of the titular saint at the center and heraldic coats of arms on the sides. It is one of the least photographed 17th-century ceilings in Rome, and I say that with a certain professional regret: people walk in, look down looking for the stairs to the catacombs, and never lift their heads.

The Chapel of the Relics and the slab with the footprints

The Chapel of the Relics, decorated in 1625 at the wish of an internationally ranked patron, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria, holds three objects that are central to the devotion of the place: a marble slab with two footprints, traditionally attributed to Jesus and linked to the episode of the Quo vadis?. One of the arrows that, according to tradition, struck Sebastian. A fragment of the column to which the saint is said to have been tied.

There is one thing about the slab with the footprints that few people in Rome know. The one tourists photograph in the small church of Domine Quo Vadis, at the fork between the Appia Antica and via Ardeatina, is a copy. The original is here, inside this chapel. Scholars read it as a pagan ex voto, probably offered to the god Redicolo or in any case tied to the success of a journey, later reinterpreted in a Christian key by popular devotion. The footprints measure about 27.5 centimeters, which corresponds to a modern shoe size of 44 or 45. It's worth telling, because it's the kind of detail that stays with you more than three centuries of architectural history.

The Chapel of San Sebastiano and the Statue by Giorgetti

The chapel dedicated to the saint was built in 1672 to a design by Ciro Ferri for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and it holds the urn with the relics that came back here from inside the walls. At the center is the famous reclining figure of Sebastian pierced by arrows, carved in marble by Giuseppe Giorgetti, a collaborator of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, between 1670 and 1672 from a drawing by the master. It's a work that relies entirely on the contrast between the body's abandon and the tension of the drapery, and that has shaped the image of the saint as much as or more than paintings have.

Bernini's Salvator Mundi

In the basilica there is a real Bernini, and it's something else compared to the statue of Sebastian: it's the Salvator Mundi, a marble bust of the Savior considered the last work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which resurfaced in 2001 in the convent next to the church and is now displayed in the basilica. The confusion between the two marbles has circulated for years in guidebooks and captions, and it's best to clear it up once and for all: the reclining figure of the martyr is by Giorgetti, and the bust of the Savior is by Bernini. They are two different sculptures, by two different artists, placed in two different spots in the same church.

The Albani Chapel, Damasus's Poem and the Other Works

On the side of the basilica, the chapel commissioned by Pope Clement XI Albani opens up, built between 1706 and 1712 to a design by Carlo Fontana with the collaboration of Alessandro Specchi and Filippo Barigioni, and under the supervision of Carlo Maratta. Inside is the sculptural group with Saint Fabian, pope, and angels, in marble, by Pietro Francesco Papaleo, dated 1712, along with 18th-century canvases by Giuseppe Passeri and Pier Leone Ghezzi. It's late Baroque architecture of excellent craftsmanship, and almost nobody looks at it because it comes after the catacombs, when the group already has its mind on the bus stop.

There is also the white marble tabernacle attributed to Mino da Fiesole, from the second half of the 15th century, the busts of Peter and Paul by Nicolas Cordier from 1608, the high altar in an aedicule with four columns designed by Ponzio, the altarpiece with the Crucifix by Innocenzo Tacconi from 1614, and the slab with Damasus's poem for Eutychius, carved in the Filocalian alphabet. The basilica has been run by the Friars Minor since 1826, and it is a parish and the titular church of a cardinal.

If you have an hour and a half, split it into half an hour of catacomb and an hour of church, not the other way around. The guide tells you everything in 30 minutes and then takes you back out. Above ground, you're in charge of your time. Entry is free, light comes in through the high windows, and you can stand in front of the Bernini for as long as you like. It's the only spot on the Appia Antica where the free ticket is worth just as much as the paid one.

Villa Grande and Villa Piccola, the Roman Houses Under the Basilica

Few people know that under the basilica, besides the cemetery galleries, two Roman buildings are preserved, with frescoes and mosaic floors, found during excavations in the 1910s. They are known as Villa Grande and Villa Piccola, conventional names given by archaeologists that have stuck.

Villa Grande is a complex of nine rooms in opus mixtum arranged around a central courtyard, with mosaics and frescoes that imitate polychrome marble, following a decorative fashion common in the second century. The most remarkable piece is a wall with a seascape showing a harbor, accompanied by Greek graffiti that scholars relate to the adjacent burial area. Villa Piccola is a two-story funerary building from the Severan period, with elegant frescoes of decorative motifs within thin red and green bands on a white background, and it was used for funeral rites.

The practical news is that these rooms are not part of the regular visiting route, and access to them is occasional. Anyone who wants to see them should find out in advance, by calling the complex or the Parco Archeologico dell'Appia Antica, because arriving here expecting to see them and finding a closed gate is a disappointment you can avoid. On the dating of Villa Piccola, the official entries vary between the Severan period and a later phase: take it as a general indication.

These are extraordinary spaces, and their periodic closure is a serious shame, because they are the material proof that this stretch of the Appian Way, before being a Christian cemetery, was a residential and productive area with houses, quarries and tombs. The romantic story of the catacombs as a secret refuge for the persecuted collapses in front of a mosaic floor with a harbor painted on the wall.

Who Looks After the Catacombs of San Sebastiano Today

Oversight of the Christian catacombs of Italy belongs to the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, a body of the Holy See established in the nineteenth century and responsible for the protection, excavation and promotion of these monuments. On site, the basilica and access to the galleries are entrusted to the Friars Minor, present here since 1826, who run the parish and open the gate every morning.

It's not an administrative detail. It means that what you visit is not a state museum with a concessionaire, but a living place of worship where Mass is celebrated, baptisms are performed and funerals are held, and which houses on its lower level an archaeological monument of the first rank. The coexistence of the two functions shapes everything: the opening hours, the silence required, the photography bans, the sudden closures for ceremonies. Take it as part of the experience and not as a failure of service. If you arrive during a service, wait: hearing the organ as you come up from the catacombs is one of those coincidences you can't buy with any ticket.

A Curiosity About the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

The word you use every time you say catacombs was born at this address, and the proof is still visible to anyone who looks at the ground instead of their phone. The complex on the Appian Way was called ad catacumbas, near the hollows, because at this point the ground sank above the old pozzolana quarries: a practical place name, like saying "at the grottoes" or "at the ditch." In antiquity, no other underground Christian cemetery was called that. The Catacombs of Priscilla were Priscilla's cemetery, the Callixtus catacombs were Callixtus's cemetery, and the word that generally meant an underground cemetery was coemeterium, from the Greek, meaning dormitory.

Then came the reversal. In the early Middle Ages the other hypogea were gradually abandoned, sealed off and forgotten, while this one, protected by the basilica above and by the uninterrupted flow of pilgrims, remained open and known. For centuries, for a Roman, catacomb meant only one place: this one. When the other cemeteries were reopened from the sixteenth century onward, the vocabulary had already decided, and the name of the single site became the name of the category. It's the same mechanism by which a trademark ends up naming an entire product category.

The rest of the story is almost comical in its geographic reach. Today the eighteenth-century ossuaries under Paris are called catacombs, though they have no connection to ancient Christianity. The hypogea of Alexandria, Egypt and the galleries of Naples are called catacombs. In everyday speech, even the basements of certain modern buildings are called catacombs. Every time someone says that word in any European language, they are unknowingly quoting a dip in the ground at the third milestone of the Appian Way.

The thing I recommend doing, and it costs nothing: before going in, stand on the forecourt in front of the basilica and notice how the ground level drops relative to the road. That drop in level is the hollow. It's the only monument in the complex that you can see without a ticket, without a guide and without a schedule, and it explains by itself why we're here.

Something Nobody Tells You About the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

That the story of the arrows is not the story of Sebastian's death. All Western painting, from Mantegna to Perugino, from Antonello to Guido Reni, has fixed the image of the young man tied to a post and pierced, and the visitor arrives down here convinced that the saint died that way. According to the passio, however, Sebastian survives the arrows. He is picked up, cared for and put back on his feet. Then he voluntarily returns before Diocletian to rebuke him for the persecutions, and at that point he is beaten to death with clubs in the hippodrome on the Palatine. The body is thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, so that neither a tomb nor a place of worship remains. It stops along the route to the river, the matron Lucina recovers it and takes it here to be buried, in catacumbas.

This double death has a consequence that almost no one explains, but that has shaped centuries of European history. It is precisely because he survives the arrows that Sebastian becomes the protector invoked against the plague. The logic of medieval devotion was direct: whoever survives the pricks also survives the buboes. During the epidemics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, confraternities dedicated altars and chapels to him across half of Europe, and every stricken city commissioned its own pierced Sebastian. The impressive number of paintings with that subject does not come from an iconographic whim: it comes from the plague.

There is also a second, more prosaic reason for the success in art. Sebastian is one of the very few subjects in the entire Christian calendar of saints who allowed a young male nude to be painted in a church without scandal. Renaissance painters noticed this right away and took advantage of it for decades, to the point that some depictions were judged too self-satisfied and removed. The martyr of the Appia has become, despite himself, the most widely used anatomical pretext in Italian religious painting.

So, the next time you stand in front of a Saint Sebastian in a museum, keep in mind that you are looking at the first act of a two-act story. The second act ends in a sewer and begins in this catacomb, nine meters below the floor of the basilica you are about to enter. It is a shift in register that always produces the same effect: two seconds of silence.

The advice I give you for visiting the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

Call ahead. I know it's not very poetic advice, but a call to 06 7850350 is worth more than any printed itinerary: the weekly closing day and closures for celebrations are the two variables that spoil more outings than rain does. That done, here is how I would plan the day, and I have been planning it this way for years.

I arrive early in the morning, right when they open, when organized groups have not yet arrived and the guide has time to answer questions. First the catacombs, half an hour. Then the basilica at a leisurely pace, a good hour: the Bernini, the slab with the footprints, the wooden ceiling, the poem of Damasus. Then out onto the Appia, heading south. The stretch from the basilica toward the Circus of Maxentius and beyond is the most beautiful part of the road, with the ancient paving stones, the pines and the Republican tombs on either side.

As for the day: if you can, go on a Sunday, because for most of the year the stretch of the Appia in front of the complex is reserved for pedestrians and cyclists, and walking on the paving stones without cars is a completely different experience. If instead you come on a weekday and by car, factor in that parking around here is complicated and that bus 118 solves the problem in 10 minutes.

Bring a light jacket even at Ferragosto: underground the temperature is constant and clearly lower than on the surface, and seeing people in tank tops shivering at the third cubicle is a recurring sight. Wear closed shoes with a sole that is not smooth, because the floor of the galleries is uneven and damp in places. No large backpacks, which become a problem in the narrow corridors for anyone walking behind you.

Last thing: if you have to choose just one Roman catacomb and you are interested in the third-century popes and Christian archaeology in the strict sense, go to San Callisto. If you are interested in painting, the best choice remains Priscilla, on the Salaria. Pick these if you want the full package, that is, catacomb plus pagan mausoleums plus seventeenth-century basilica plus Via Appia outside the gate. That is the best package in absolute terms for anyone with a single day who wants to understand how Rome moves from paganism to Christianity without changing address.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

Everyone knows the Appia is the regina viarum, the road that Appius Claudius the Blind had built in 312 BC toward Capua, and that the Romans extended it as far as Brindisi. Almost no one, however, remembers that since 2024 Via Appia has been officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List under the name Via Appia. Regina Viarum, under the third, fourth and sixth criteria, as a serial property made up of 19 components spread along the route. It is the sixtieth Italian site on the list and the first nomination promoted directly by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

The interesting point for those standing on the forecourt of the basilica is that the recognition concerns not only the paving stones: it concerns the system of monuments, tombs, aqueducts and shrines that the road generated along its sides for two millennia. The catacombs of this stretch are an integral part of it, not decoration. The urban stretch of the Appia, the one running from Porta San Sebastiano to the great funerary complexes at the third milestone, is precisely the segment where the original function of the road as the city's linear cemetery is most clearly legible: Roman law forbade burials within the pomerium, and tombs lined up outside the gates, along the consular roads, to be seen by passersby.

The second little-known fact concerns devotion instead. This basilica is one of the seven churches of the Roman pilgrimage revived by Saint Philip Neri in the mid-sixteenth century, a circuit of about 20 kilometers that pilgrims walked on foot in one or two days, stopping at San Pietro, San Paolo, San Sebastiano, San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Maggiore. The road that still bears the name of that route, via delle Sette Chiese, starts here and heads toward Saint Paul Outside the Walls. In recent years, in some editions of the Jubilee circuit, the Santuario del Divino Amore has been added to the seven traditional stops, but the historical route remains the same and passes through this gate.

UNESCO recognition has changed how the road is perceived, but not yet the way it is visited. The vast majority of tourists arrive by bus, enter the catacomb, leave, and head off again by bus, without walking even 100 meters on the basalt paving. It is the biggest waste in the area. The real monument here is the road, and the road is visited by walking on it.

The right photo to take at the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

Underground, the phone stays in your pocket. The visit rules explicitly prohibit photographing and filming inside the galleries, and the reason is not whimsical: the wall paintings are fragile, flashes damage them, and a group of 30 people stopping to take pictures in a corridor 70 centimeters wide blocks the visit for everyone. I'll add that, with the camera off, you'll experience that half hour better: looking at things instead of framing them is an exercise that pays off a lot underground.

The right photo, then, is taken on the surface, and it is the facade of the basilica seen from the forecourt, with the three-arched portico and the spolia columns, taken early in the morning when the light comes in low from the east and the forecourt is still empty. The portico has a depth that low sun draws very well: stand slightly off-center to the left, so that the paired columns stagger instead of overlapping, and include a patch of sky above the tympanum.

The variant I recommend, and that almost no one does, is the reverse shot: turn your back on the basilica and frame the paving of the Appian Way heading south, with the stone pines framing it and the dry-stone walls narrowing the perspective. That is the image that shows where you are, much more than the facade. If you have a telephoto lens, compress the row of pines: the effect is that of the 19th-century Grand Tour views, and it's no coincidence, because it is exactly the viewpoint landscape painters chose.

Third option, inside the church, where the rules are the ordinary ones for a place of worship and it's best to ask the friars: the carved wooden ceiling, shot from below at the center of the nave, and Bernini's Salvator Mundi, which looks much better in side natural light than with any flash. The technical tip, if you shoot with your phone: rest your elbows against your chest, hold your breath, and raise the exposure slightly. Roman churches fool every sensor in the world, which reads the light marble and underexposes everything else.

One last thing: the group photo in front of the portico only works in mid-morning, when the sun is no longer low but the portico is still in full shade. At noon everyone comes out squinting with a burned facade. If you want to take home a group memory, that is the moment.

Some important events that happened here in history

First century AD. The area, already marked by pozzolana quarries, begins to be used for burials. Loculi, columbaria and two decorated residential buildings are built, the ones archaeologists will call Villa Grande and Villa Piccola.

End of the second century. The quarry is abandoned and the three mausoleums of Marcus Clodius Hermes, the Innocentiores and the Ascia are carved into the walls of the small quarry area, with paintings, stucco and inscriptions.

Mid-third century. The small quarry area is filled in to create an embankment at a higher level. On the new surface, the porticoed triclia, the marble-clad aedicula and the room with the well are built.

258. The Hieronymian Martyrology places the joint commemoration of Peter and Paul in catacumbas under the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus. This is the year from which the still-open question of the presence of apostolic relics in this cemetery begins.

Second half of the third century and early fourth century. Devotees incise over 600 graffiti with invocations to the two apostles on the walls of the triclia. It is the largest known concentration of early Christian devotional graffiti in Rome.

January 20, early years of the fourth century. Deposition of Sebastian in catacumbas, recorded in the Depositio martyrum.

First half of the fourth century. Constantine has the Basilica Apostolorum built, with an ambulatory plan, burying the triclia and the rooms below to obtain the foundation embankment.

End of the fourth century. Pope Damasus I has the poem in honor of the martyr Eutychius inscribed, in the lettering designed by Furius Dionysius Filocalus. The cycle of Jonah is painted in the cubicula.

Between the end of the fourth century and the first decades of the fifth century. According to tradition, the relics of Bishop Quirinus arrive from Siscia, in Pannonia, and are placed in the mausoleum behind the apse, later called the Platonia.

826. The relics of Sebastian are taken to the Vatican to shield them from the threat of Saracen raids, which a short time later severely damage the complex.

858-867. Pope Nicholas I rebuilds the damaged church, ensuring the continuity of worship in a place that will never be abandoned.

13th century. The arches of the ancient basilica are walled up, care of the site passes to the Cistercians, the altar is reconsecrated by Pope Honorius III, and in the vestibule of the mausoleum the chapel that bears his name is painted.

Mid-16th century. San Filippo Neri revives the pilgrimage of the Seven Churches, and this basilica becomes one of its fixed stops, with thousands of pilgrims who each year walk the circuit on foot.

1608-1613. Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli Borghese has the basilica rebuilt: design by Flaminio Ponzio, completion and facade by Giovanni Vasanzio, wooden ceiling by Annibale Durante, busts of the apostles by Nicolas Cordier.

1625. The Chapel of the Relics is decorated, and it houses the slab with the footprints of Quo vadis?, the arrow, and the fragment of the column of martyrdom.

1670-1672. Ciro Ferri builds the Chapel of San Sebastiano for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and Giuseppe Giorgetti sculpts the reclining figure of the martyr from a design by Bernini.

1706-1712. Carlo Fontana builds the Albani Chapel for Pope Clement XI, with the group of Saint Fabian by Pietro Francesco Papaleo and the canvases by Passeri and Ghezzi.

1826. Custody of the basilica and the complex passes to the Frati Minori, who still maintain it today.

1892. The excavations show that the Platonia is not the temporary burial place of the apostles but the mausoleum of Quirinus, closing a controversy that lasted centuries.

The 1910s. Beneath the basilica, Villa Grande and Villa Piccola come to light, with frescoes, mosaics and the maritime landscape with harbor.

2001. In the adjacent convent, the Salvator Mundi resurfaces, a marble bust considered the last masterpiece of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

2024. The Appian Way enters the UNESCO World Heritage List as Via Appia. Regina Viarum, the 60th Italian site, with 19 serial components along the route.

Who Has Passed Through the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

A list that starts with pozzolana quarry workers and ends with you, and that in between holds 19 centuries of very different people.

The first to pass through were the slaves and freedmen buried in the poorest tombs, the nameless ones, the people no document records. Then Marcus Clodius Hermes, who paid for the mausoleum himself and had his name put on the facade so it would last: it did, and we are reading it right now. Then the members of the funerary association of the Innocentiores, ordinary people who pooled monthly dues so they would not end up in a common grave, and who in doing so left us one of the most beautiful documents on social life in imperial Rome.

Then Sebastian, the soldier whom the ancient sources can't even agree on for his hometown, and the matron Lucina who, according to tradition, gathered his body and brought it here to bury. Then the hundreds of anonymous pilgrims who scratched the names of Peter and Paul into the plaster of the triclia: they are the most tangible crowd in this whole story, and the only one whose handwriting we have.

Then Constantine, who had a basilica built over all of this, burying the triclia to use it as a foundation. Then Pope Damasus I, the poet pope who at the end of the fourth century equipped the tombs of the Roman martyrs with his verses, and who left the lines for Eutychius here. Quirinus, who arrived dead from Pannonia. Pope Nicholas I, who in the ninth century rebuilt the church after the Saracens. Pope Honorius III, who had a chapel carved out in the vestibule of a mausoleum and had it painted.

Then Saint Philip Neri, who in the 16th century brought his pilgrims here on the Seven Churches circuit, turning a devotion into a popular walk that has lasted centuries in Rome. Then Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli Borghese with his architects, Flaminio Ponzio and Giovanni Vasanzio, and with Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria, who paid for the Chapel of the Relics. Then Cardinal Francesco Barberini with Ciro Ferri and Giuseppe Giorgetti. Then Pope Clement XI with Carlo Fontana and Carlo Maratta. And Gian Lorenzo Bernini, present here with the last sculpture of his life, which resurfaced only in 2001.

Then the archaeologists of the 19th and 20th centuries, who removed the Platonia from the category of legends and reconstructed the stratigraphic sequence of the complex by digging beneath a working church, which is the hardest job an archaeologist can do. And finally the Frati Minori, who have opened the gate every morning since 1826, and the thousands of people who go down those steps every year for half an hour.

You are the last line of a list 19 centuries long, and this queue, unlike almost all the others in Rome, has never been interrupted.

The Catacombs of San Sebastiano with children

It works, under certain conditions, and it's worth explaining why, because too many families arrive here unprepared. Duration is the first factor in its favor: half an hour is exactly the attention threshold of a child between eight and 12, and the visit ends before the complaints begin. The story of Sebastian surviving the arrows hooks them, the fish scratched on the wall amuses them because it's a secret code, and the sea monster that swallows Jonah is comic-book material.

The second factor is that there are no human remains on display along the visitor route. The niches are empty, and the burials are largely emptied or not visible. Anyone worried about the ossuary effect can relax: this is not a macabre place, it's an ancient cemetery, and the impression you get is of a labyrinth dug into tufa, not a chamber of horrors. Families looking for a strong thrill, to be clear, will be disappointed.

Under five, on the other hand, it becomes a gamble. The darkness, the echo, the narrow passages and half an hour of spoken explanation test the patience of anyone, and there's no way out: once you're down, you leave with the group. Strollers aren't allowed. Free admission up to and including age six at least keeps you from paying for a lottery. If you have a very young child, my suggestion is to take turns: one goes down with the older kids, the other stays up in the basilica, which is spacious, bright and free, and then you switch.

A tip for school groups: prepare the students beforehand with just two notions, the origin of the word catacomb and the story of the arrows. Those two alone are enough to turn half an hour of corridors into a hunt for details. A kid who knows what he's looking for pays attention, one who doesn't just walks.

Accessibility, temperature and claustrophobia at the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

It needs to be said clearly: Roman catacombs, in general, are not wheelchair accessible, and this one is no exception. The route involves stairs, changes in level and narrow stretches of gallery where you walk single file. Even those with serious difficulty walking should consider this carefully. The official booking channel explicitly states limited access for people with reduced mobility, and provides free admission for the person with a disability and their companion, which also serves as an indication of common sense: ask the staff before going down.

The basilica above, on the other hand, is reached from the forecourt without any significant difficulty and can be visited freely. For those who can't go down, this is a serious consolation, not a fallback. Upstairs there's a Bernini, a statue by Giorgetti, a seventeenth-century wooden ceiling and the slab with the footprints. It's not a consolation prize, it's half the visit.

On temperature: underground the climate is constant all year and noticeably cooler than the surface. In summer it's a relief, in winter you'll need a sweater, and in August the difference between the forecourt and the gallery is enough to make anyone who arrives in a tank top shiver. Bring a light jacket even when it's 35 degrees outside: it's the most obvious advice in the world and the most ignored.

On claustrophobia, an honest take. The route is lit, ventilated and walked every day by hundreds of people, and there's no real danger. It is still a corridor dug into tufa several meters below ground level, with low ceilings and passages where you walk in single file. Anyone who has panic attacks in elevators or on the metro risks spending an unpleasant half hour, because the group moves tightly together and leaving before the end isn't immediate. There's nothing to be ashamed of in staying up top: if the thought makes you uncomfortable, wait for the others in the church and enjoy the basilica. Forcing yourself means ruining your day, and it's not worth it.

When to go to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano and when to avoid them

The best time is the shoulder season, April and May, or September and October, when outdoor temperatures allow the walk along the Appia and the light on the paving stones is just right. Winter has the advantage of thin crowds and the drawback of short days: at 16.30 in December it's already almost dark on the Appia, and the walk loses half its point. Roman summer, in July and August, punishes anyone walking the Appia at noon, but rewards those who arrive at 10 in the morning: underground it's cool, and up top, in the shade of the pines, you survive.

The ideal time is opening. Organized groups, the ones from tourist buses and cruises, typically arrive mid-morning and early afternoon, and when they do, lines form and large groups gather. The best two hours, from direct experience, are the first ones of the morning and the last one before closing, with the caveat that the last entry cutoff comes well before the gate closes.

Days to avoid, if you can: the ones right after long weekends, when crowds stay high without the advantage of the weather, and January 20, the liturgical feast of Saint Sebastian, when the site is packed with worshippers. Unless, of course, that is exactly what you're looking for: attending the saint's feast at the place where he is buried, with the basilica crowded, is an experience no ordinary weekday can give you. In that case, go on purpose, and keep in mind that the underground visit will be harder to arrange.

Catacombs of San Sebastiano or Catacombs of San Callisto

It's the most frequent question, and the honest answer is that the two sites barely overlap at all. San Callisto, a little farther up the same road, is the first official cemetery of Rome's Christian community, the burial place of the third-century popes, a system of galleries much more extensive across several levels, with the Crypt of the Popes and the Crypt of Saint Cecilia. It's the place where you see the Church becoming an institution, with its hierarchy, its administration and its managed cemeteries.

Here, instead, you see the transition: a quarry that becomes a pagan cemetery, a pagan cemetery that takes in Christian burials, an apostolic devotion that generates an imperial basilica, an imperial basilica that becomes a baroque church. Nowhere else in Rome can this chain be read so clearly in such a small space, and nowhere else will you find decorated pagan mausoleums and 600 Christian graffiti together, a few meters apart.

My practical advice, if you have time for both, is to do them on the same day and in this order: San Callisto first, then San Sebastiano. Eight minutes on foot along the Appia separate them. Going to Callisto first gives you the institutional picture, the organized Church, the popes, arriving here afterward shows you where that world came from and how mixed with paganism it still was just moments before. In reverse order, it works less well. If you have time for only one, reread the previous chapter: it depends on what you're looking for, and in any case it's impossible to get it entirely wrong.

Things to see around the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

This is the real advantage of this site compared with Rome's other underground sites: around it there's already a full day ready to go, and you don't need any transport to fill it.

Toward the city, a few hundred meters away, are the Catacombs of San Callisto. A little farther up, at the junction with via Ardeatina, is the small church of Domine Quo Vadis with the copy of the slab with the footprints. Farther toward Rome you reach Porta San Sebastiano, the largest and best-preserved gate of the Aurelian Walls, which houses the Museum of the Walls: it's the best way to understand where the ancient city ended and the countryside began. On the same line, halfway toward the center, are the Baths of Caracalla, served by the same bus.

Going south instead, the Appia continues among tombs, basolato and pines as far as the Villa of the Quintilii, the largest imperial residence in the Roman countryside, reachable on the same 118 line. On its northern side opens the Caffarella Park, a green valley with real sheep within the municipal territory of Rome. All of this is part of the Appian Way Park, which is open and doesn't charge admission.

If the underground bug has bitten you, the rest of Rome's catalog is within bus reach: the Catacombs of Priscilla on the Salaria for the painting, the Catacombs of Santa Tecla on the Ostiense, the Catacombs of Commodilla, the Museum of the Catacombs of Generosa and the Ipogeo di via Dino Compagni, open to visitors only by reservation and perhaps the most extraordinary of all for the quality of its paintings. The basilica above has its own page, that of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura. To put together the full itinerary, there's the section Il mio viaggio, and the big picture of the city is in the Tourist Attractions.

Quick Questions About the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

How much does a ticket to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano cost?

The official booking channel lists €12.00 for a full ticket, which is €10.00 for admission plus €2.00 in booking fees, and €9.00 for a reduced ticket, which is €7.00 plus €2.00. The guided tour is included in the price. It's still worth checking the current rates when you buy and buying only from official channels.

What are the opening hours of the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

They open Tuesday to Sunday from 9.15 to 17.15, with last entry at 16.45. The site closes for a few weeks in December, as well as on December 25 and January 1. The weekly day off is Monday.

Where exactly are the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

At Via Appia Antica 136, 00179 Rome, under the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura, just past the third mile of Via Appia and about 800 meters beyond the Catacombs of San Callisto for those coming from the city.

How do I get to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano by public transport?

By ATAC buses 118 and 660, stop Basilica S. Sebastiano, or by the 218, getting off at Fosse Ardeatine and walking 300 meters. The 118 comes from the area of the Circus Maximus and the Baths of Caracalla, the 660 from the Arco di Travertino metro station on Line A, and the 218 from the San Giovanni area via Via Ardeatina.

How long does the visit to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano take?

30 minutes, according to the duration stated by the official booking channel. Add at least another half hour for the basilica above, which is free and deserves more time than most visitors give it.

Do I need to book the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

On most days you can arrive and buy your ticket on site, waiting for the departure of the group in your language. During busy periods, and for groups, booking through the official channel avoids the wait and the risk of finding the site closed.

Can you visit the Catacombs of San Sebastiano on your own?

No. Entry is only with a site guide, in a group, and the visit is included in the ticket. There is no independent visit, for safety and conservation reasons: below ground there are kilometers of unlit galleries.

What languages is the guided tour of the Catacombs of San Sebastiano offered in?

Italian, English, French, Spanish and German. Groups are formed by language as visitors arrive, so in low season the wait can get longer and in high season it can get shorter.

Can you take photos inside the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

No. The visit rules prohibit photographing and filming video inside the galleries. Outside, on the forecourt and along the Appia, you can take photos freely. Inside the basilica, the ordinary rules of a place of worship apply, and it's best to ask.

Is it cold inside the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

The underground temperature is constant all year and noticeably lower than on the surface. The visit rules specifically recommend clothing suited to underground temperatures: a light jacket is enough, even in August.

Are there visible bones in the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

Along the visit route, the loculi are empty and there are no human remains on display. Anyone looking for the ossuary effect should go elsewhere: here you will see galleries dug into tufa, cubicles, sarcophagi, frescoes, inscriptions and mausoleums.

Are the Catacombs of San Sebastiano suitable for children?

From six or seven years old up, they work very well: half an hour is the right length, the story of the saint and the symbols scratched on the walls catch attention, and there are no disturbing images. Under age five, it's your call, given the darkness, the echo and half an hour of spoken explanation.

Do children pay for the ticket?

Admission is free up to and including age six. From ages 7 to 16, the reduced rate applies, which also covers school groups of the same age range, with one free accompanying teacher for every 15 paying participants.

Are the Catacombs of San Sebastiano wheelchair accessible?

No. The route includes stairs, changes in level and narrow sections, like almost all Roman catacombs, and access for people with reduced mobility is stated to be limited. The basilica above, however, can be reached from the forecourt and is free.

What's the difference between the Catacombs of San Sebastiano and the Catacombs of San Callisto?

San Callisto is the official cemetery of the Christian community of Rome, with the crypt of the popes from the third century and a much larger system of galleries. These are smaller but keep the three pagan mausoleums of the piazzola, the triclia with the graffiti of the apostles, and a seventeenth-century basilica overhead. The two visits don't overlap.

Why are they called catacombs?

Because this cemetery on the Appian Way was called ad catacumbas, from the Greek katà kymbe, meaning "near the hollows," because of the pozzolana quarries and the sunken ground. The name of this place later spread to all Christian underground cemeteries and, from there, to much of the world.

Were Peter and Paul buried at the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

Ancient sources, from the Depositio martyrum to the Martyrology of Jerome, link the two apostles to this site in 258. Were the relics really kept here, and for how long, is still debated among scholars. The graffiti in the triclia prove with certainty one thing alone, but a huge one: people came here to pray to Peter and Paul, in large numbers, already in the third century.

What is the triclia?

A covered, colonnaded hall built into the mid-third-century embankment, used for funeral banquets in honor of the dead and the martyrs. The plastered walls preserve more than 600 graffiti invoking the two apostles, carved between the second half of the third century and the early fourth century. It is the most important document in the complex.

What is the Platonia?

A structure built after the Constantinian basilica, set behind the apse, which for centuries was believed to be the place of the temporary burial of Peter and Paul. Excavations at the end of the 19th century made clear that it is the mausoleum of Quirinus, bishop of Siscia in Pannonia.

Who was Saint Sebastian?

A Roman martyr laid to rest here on January 20 according to the Depositio martyrum. Saint Ambrose calls him of Milanese origin, while the fifth-century passio makes him a soldier born in Narbonne to a Milanese family. According to the hagiographic account, he survives the arrows and is then beaten to death, which is why devotion calls on him against the plague.

Who runs the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

Oversight belongs to the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, the Holy See body that protects the Christian catacombs of Italy. On site, the basilica and access to the underground are entrusted to the Friars Minor, present in this complex since 1826.

Does the Bernini bust at San Sebastiano really exist?

Yes, it is the Salvator Mundi, a marble bust of the Savior considered the last work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which resurfaced in 2001 in the adjoining convent. The reclining figure of the pierced Saint Sebastian, in his chapel, is instead by Giuseppe Giorgetti, from 1670-1672, after a design by Bernini.

Are the Quo Vadis footprints here or in the Domine Quo Vadis church?

The original is in the Chapel of the Relics of the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura. The one at the center of the little Domine Quo Vadis church is a copy. The slab bears two footprints about 27.5 centimeters long, which scholars read as a pagan ex-voto later reinterpreted in Christian terms.

Can you visit Villa Grande and Villa Piccola under the basilica?

They are not part of the standard route, and access is occasional. They are two Roman buildings with frescoes and mosaics uncovered in the excavations of the 1910s. Anyone who wants to see them should check in advance with the complex or with the Parco Archeologico dell'Appia Antica.

Is the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura free to visit?

Yes. The church has free admission, open 8:15-18:00 from October to March and 8:15-19:00 from April to September. Inside you'll find the Bernini bust, the statue by Giorgetti, the Chapel of the Relics, the Albani Chapel, and the Damasian verse for Eutychius.

How much time do you need to see the Catacombs of San Sebastiano and the Appian Way together?

A full half-day. Half an hour in the catacombs, an hour in the basilica, and the rest on the Appian Way between San Callisto, the Domine Quo Vadis, and, if you have the legs or a bicycle, the Villa of the Quintilii. Sunday, when a stretch is reserved for pedestrians and cyclists, is the best day to walk.

Were the Catacombs of San Sebastiano rediscovered like the others?

No, and that is what makes them special. They are considered among the very few Christian cemeteries in Rome that have always remained accessible: while the other hypogea disappeared underground for centuries and were rediscovered starting in the 16th century, here the basilica kept functioning and pilgrims kept descending without interruption.

Is it worth visiting the Catacombs of San Sebastiano if I have already seen San Callisto?

Yes, and that is not a convenient answer. The two visits don't overlap: at San Callisto you see the Church becoming an institution, while here you see the moment a pagan cemetery becomes Christian, with decorated mausoleums, a fish graffito beside an anchor, and hundreds of invocations to the apostles on the plaster. They are 800 meters apart and tell two different stories.

Is there a cloakroom or luggage storage at the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

There is no structured storage service, and the narrow corridors make bulky backpacks awkward. Travel light: the visit takes half an hour, and you don't need to carry anything beyond a jacket.

Is there a bookshop at the Catacombs of San Sebastiano?

Yes, the complex has a shop with books and devotional objects and a beverage dispenser. Those who want to go deeper find on site the publications of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which are the best way to take home something serious.

The last thing to know about the Catacombs of San Sebastiano

These are not the largest catacombs in Rome, they are not the most frescoed and they are not even the most famous. They are the ones that gave their name to all the others, and they are the place where you best see the thing that happens constantly in Rome: a place that changes religion without changing address. A quarry becomes a cemetery, the cemetery becomes a shrine, the shrine becomes an imperial basilica, the imperial basilica becomes a Baroque church, and the Baroque church is today a parish where Mass is said on Saturday afternoon and children are baptized on Sunday morning. 18 centuries without a day of interruption, above 900 meters of galleries full of buried people.

Do it like this: go down early, listen to the guide without photographing anything, come back up to the church, look at the ceiling and the bust by Bernini, and then go out and stand still for 10 minutes on the paving stones, with your back to the facade, watching the Appia head south among the pines. Those 10 minutes are not included in any ticket and they are the best part of the day. Then call before you leave, because the closing day here is the only variable capable of ruining everything else.

Article written by the editorial staff of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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