top of page

Ancient Romans Catacombs: Rediscovered

Writer: EmilyEmily

In the Roman city of Villa Torlonia, there were over 4,000 graves of Jewish people found in this famous catacomb of the city. "It contain just under 4,000 burial niches spanning about 150,000 square feet and remain both intact and visitable, boast characteristic iconographic Jewish symbols that constitute a treasure trove of information about Jewish life a few centuries after the birth of Christianity in Rome two millennia ago. It [The catacomb itself] was discovered by chance in 1919 during construction work on the estate at the site, where the general area had been known through the Middle Ages as Campo dei Giudey (“Field of Dreams”), and its first exploratory campaign was directed by Roberto Pariben of the Royal Superintendency of Archaeological Excavations and Museums who, much to his chagrin, discovered that most the tombs had already been looted." says JewishPress.com.


" It was from this villa that Il Duce announced his racial laws stripping Jews of their citizenship and barring them from the professions. One reason for his closing the site to visitors may have been because of his designation of the catacombs as a conveniently accessible underground bunker in the event that he had to protect himself and his family. (Rather than hide in the catacombs, however, he attempted an escape and was caught by an Italian partisan in northern Italy, who summarily executed him on April 28, 1945.)".


Torlonia catacombs: Pathway and Loculi


The catacombs are said to include many things from drawings and paintings of animals, temples and messages relating to the Jewish community. It provided what was a great history lesson to those who found it. Perhaps what life was like 1,500 years ago!


The findings of the catacombs in 1919 were when a Prince has offered his villa to Mussolini, only a few years later was this cemetery of the Jewish discovered. Likely used within the 3rd and 5th centuries there were thousands of graves discovered on multiple levels. It was insane. With these catacombs, Mussolini later saw an opportunity and used them for his bunker to keep him and his family safe.


Inside one of the chambers in the catacomb (Times of Israel)


“The responsibility for the preservation of the Jewish catacombs rests with the state. However, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities has also been consulted. Many years ago, I was tasked with looking after the issue by its rabbinic consulting body,” Di Segni said, who added the project was funded by private donors from abroad. (Times of Israel)


“The first time I visited the catacombs [at Villa Torlonia] we found a disaster, with literally thousands of tombs opened and human remains exposed [due to grave robbers and centuries of neglect]. Some of the barriers closing the tombs excavated in the walls had collapsed. At the same time, many chambers and corridors featured incredible frescoes and inscriptions,” Genach told The Times of Israel via telephone.


After Genach’s initial survey of the Italian catacombs, he gave a presentation for the Italian authorities detailing the scope of the work he and his team had carried out in the similar catacombs at Beit Shearim. Rabbi Chizkiya Kalmanovich from the European Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries also participated in the presentation. The expertise of Kalmanovich and that of another specialist in the preservation of ancient Jewish cemeteries, Rabbi Levi Shmaya, proved to be essential in conceiving and carrying out the project. (Times of Israel)


So forth, they continued investigations to learn the history behind the catacomb. In all aspects like tourism, archeology and so on.




Have you visted a Catacomb?

  • Yes I have!

  • Nope, not yet!









תגובות


Privacy Policy
We receive, collect and store any information you enter on our website or provide us in any other way. In addition, we collect the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password; computer and connection information and purchase history. We may use software tools to measure and collect session information, including page response times, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information, and methods used to browse away from the page. We also collect personally identifiable information (including name, email, password, communications); payment details (including credit card information), comments, feedback, product reviews, recommendations, and personal profile.


When you conduct a transaction on our website, as part of the process, we collect personal information you give us such as your name, address and email address. Your personal information will be used for the specific reasons stated above only.

We collect such Non-personal and Personal Information for the following purposes:
To provide and operate the Services;
To provide our Users with ongoing customer assistance and technical support;
To be able to contact our Visitors and Users with general or personalized service-related notices and promotional messages;
To create aggregated statistical data and other aggregated and/or inferred Non-personal Information, which we or our business partners may use to provide and improve our respective services; 
To comply with any applicable laws and regulations.

Our company is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Wix.com provides us with the online platform that allows us to sell our products and services to you. Your data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and the general Wix.com applications. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall.  

All direct payment gateways offered by Wix.com and used by our company adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of credit card information by our store and its service providers.

We may contact you to notify you regarding your account, to troubleshoot problems with your account, to resolve a dispute, to collect fees or monies owed, to poll your opinions through surveys or questionnaires, to send updates about our company, or as otherwise necessary to contact you to enforce our User Agreement, applicable national laws, and any agreement we may have with you. For these purposes we may contact you via email, telephone, text messages, and postal mail.

If you don’t want us to process your data anymore, please contact us at [your email] or send us mail to: emilypipad@gmail.com

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here that it has been updated, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we use and/or disclose it. 

If you would like to: access, correct, amend or delete any personal information we have about you, you are invited to contact us at [your email] or send us mail to: emilypipad@gmail.com

bottom of page