Necropolis Under St. Peter's Basilica

This is another one of the places we visited Tuesday. It is rare for tourists to get to go here, because they limit the tours to 10 per day with only 10-12 people per tour (and you have to book well in advance). I was pretty excited to go here after reading about it in "A Traveller in Rome" (chapter 8, sections 2-4).

First a little history lesson about St. Peter's compliments of Rick Steves' Rome":

"Nearly 2,000 years ago, this area was the site of Nero's Circus--a huge Roman chariot racecourse. . . . The Romans had no marching bands, so for halftime entertainment they killed Christians. . . .One of those killed here, in about A.D. 65, was Peter. . .His remains were buried in a nearby cemetery where, for 250 years, they were quietly and secretly revered. When Christianity was finally legalized in 313, the Christian emperor Constantine built a church on the site of the martyrdom" of Peter.

So this pagan cemetery is under St. Peter's Basilica. Because Morton saw this over 50 years ago and the excavations have undergone significant preservation work in the last 10 years, we had a very different experience. But what we saw was pretty incredible. I especially liked the 1st century mosaics we saw. The only bad part about the tour is now that the necropolis is under such stringent preservations (part of the reason for the few tours available) the humidity is set at 95% with no fresh air really coming in. I thought it would be like the catacombs we had seen the day before with nice cool air. But no. Quite different. So if you go, be sure to bring something to fan yourself with--I never thought I would feel so relieved to come out into the 50 %-90% humidity of Rome!

I found an online article written by someone who had taken this tour last year. She's much more eloquent than I could ever be. So if you're interested in reading more about the necropolis (scavi), read Debi Lander's article here. (I guess this place figures prominently in Angels & Demons --I haven't seen it).