What Is A Catacomb And Where Could It Be Found?
A catacomb is a subterranean cemetery composed of galleries or passages accoutred with side recesses for tombs. There is no authentic piece of information that suggests that catacombs are only confined to Rome. The relic of burying the dead in underground rock chambers goes back far in history, and catacombs are renowned all over the Mediterranean world. Design-wise, all catacombs roughly follow the same pattern, irrespective of the place that they are built. Starting as small private burial areas, they later on become an intricate yet enormous maze of narrow galleries, usually only three to four feet wide, the light and air coming from shafts, which are kept at regular intervals of distance in the narrow galleries. These galleries lead to small rooms called ‘cubicula’ and the bodies lay in grave niches, carved in the wall or sculpted in the floor and sealed by slabs of marble or huge tiles.
