Can anyone tell me what the roman catacombs are like today?
Here is a picture of a good bit http://www.prestotours.com/catacombs.jpg The catacombs are the ancient underground cemeteries, used by the Christian and the Jewish communities, above all at Rome. The Christian catacombs, which are the most numerous, began in the second century and the excavating continued until the first half of the fifth. In the beginning they were only burial places. Here the Christians gathered to celebrate their funeral rites, the anniversaries of the martyrs and of the dead. During the persecutions, in exceptional cases, the catacombs were used as places of momentary refuge for the celebration of the Eucharist. They were not used as secret hiding places of the early Christians. This is only a fiction taken from novels or movies. After the persecutions, especially in the time of pope Saint Damascus (366 – 384) they became real shrines of the martyrs, centre’s of devotion and of pilgrimage for Chr
