It was a rare opportunity to visit the ancient Roman-era Jewish catacombs under the grounds of the villa Torlonia in Rome and see first hand some of the extraordinary painted decoration of the tombs.
The catacombs, believed to date from the 2nd to the 5th centuries CE, are not open to the public, and the visit was specially arranged for delegates to the annual general assembly of the AEPJ (European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage) that was held in Rome this week.
The multi-level catacombs lie under the grounds of the villa Torlonia on Rome’s via Nomentana. They are one of six Jewish catacombs complexes in Rome — some no longer exist and only the villa Torlonia and the Vigna Randanini catacombs on the Appian Way are accessible today.
The villa Torlonia catacombs were discovered by chance in 1919 and occupy some 12,000 square meters. They include nearly 4,000 burial niches.
Some of the walls and ceilings are decorated with vivid paintings of menorahs and other Jewish symbols as we as animals and geometric and floral motifs, and there are many inscriptions.
The brief visit only took in a very small part of the site — a long, narrow corridor lined with shelf-like niches, now empty, where bodies had been interred, and several (empty) tombs lavishly decorated with paintings incorporating Jewish symbols and iconography, including menorahs, the holy ark, shofars, and etrogs.
Some of the niches had recently been closed during efforts carried out in recent years to recover bones and bone fragments and reinter (or wall them up) them according to Halacha.
In October 2018, the International Catacomb Society noted that a session of the Jerusalem conference “New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region,” included lectures on recent work in Villa Torlonia catacombs and a tour of a photography exhibit of the site after excavation and conservation work beginning in 2016:
The task of reburying the ancient bones or moving them, when necessary, to new locations has been carried out by volunteers with the Israel-based rescue and recovery organization ZAKA at the behest of the Italian rabbinate, which considers halakhic treatment of the bones a priority in any study the site. In the course of the burial and rebuilding operations, new artifacts and structural details have emerged, including clearer views of the scratched and painted inscriptions and other markings on tombs, all in course of study and publication.
Click to read an article about Rome’s ancient Jewish catacombs, with a focus on villa Torlonia
Click to read a 2012 archival and historical survey of the villa Torlonia Jewish catacombs