Rome Is Almost Ready To Open Its Ancient Jewish Catacombs
Image by City of Rome
Soon, when Americans head to Rome, there will be a new archaeological treasure to check out among the city’s varied offerings — underground burial chambers containing the remains of Jews from the Roman Empire.
“There is a world to be discovered down there,” Claudio Procaccio, cultural director for the city’s Jewish community, told the Wall Street Journal.
The site was discovered more than a century ago, when laborers were building a new stables for Villa Torlonia, the estate under which the catacombs sit. It’s taken all that time for the Italian government to appropriate the necessary funds — about $1.5 million — to restore the site and make it suitable for visits from the public. If all goes right, the project could be finished by next year.
According to experts on site, the artistry in the catacombs attests to their Jewish nature, including depictions of menorahs and Torah scrolls, in addition to Hebrew inscriptions referring to synagogues then present in the city.
Villa Torlonia has a complicated history; it was a sometime residence of dictator Benito Mussolini, who signed anti-Jewish legislation and helped send thousands of Italian Jews to death camps.
_Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
