With this article I would like to immerse you a little in the typical atmosphere (fresh, humid and incredible) of one of the most beautiful Roman catacombs. Here, in fact, are photos from the catacombs of Saints Peter and Marcellinus, located along the Via Casilina. This underground complex, the third largest in Rome, after those of Domitilla and Callisto, are truly wonderful and have recently been reopened. It is worth it, and I tell you this as a local tour guide, to go down into these underground tunnels to come into intimate contact with the first stirrings of life of the Christian community in Rome, obtaining at the same time the possibility of savoring the formation of art and purely Christian iconography, which took place in the catacombs of Rome.

Let's think, for example, of the paintings of the 3rd and 4th centuries so well preserved and preserved that they seem to have been painted yesterday, as well as the narrow tunnels, with open niches, which more than others manage to throw you into the atmosphere, a little gloomy and a little holy, of these underground environments. These catacombs were already excavated around the 3rd century, therefore before the advent of Constantine and the progressive, as well as unstoppable, Christianization of the Roman Empire. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Constantine himself had a basilica and a mausoleum built right above these catacombs, and above the crypt of the two martyrs (a typical complex of the Constantinian age). It should be noted that the catacombs are named after Saints Peter and Marcellinus ad duas lauros. What does it mean? The Latin terms indicate an ancient imperial residence so extensive that, according to perhaps slightly exaggerated sources, it reached from the Casilina area to the slopes of the Alban Hills! Apart from this, it is certain that the whole territory was urbanized, and that the first nucleus of the catacombs probably arose right below this princely residence. Nothing strange, because over the centuries many members of the Roman aristocracy, who converted to Christianity, also donated extensive lands where they could carry out religious functions. Let us never forget that the catacombs were not at all, as is commonly said, underground tunnels unknown to most people in which Christians took refuge due to persecution. Nothing could be further from the truth! The catacombs were cemeteries also used by Christians to bury their dead people, funerary areas which later became the first real point of reference for the Christian community before the construction of churches and the transfer of relics within them. This is why the frescoes that, over the centuries, have survived in the catacombs, such as these of Saints Peter and Marcellinus, are a powerful tool for understanding the Christian community in its early days.

Finally, a small glimpse of the two martyrs. Peter and Marcellinus would die under the persecutions of Diocletian at the beginning of the 4th century AD, the last Roman emperor to perpetrate, in grand style, persecutions against this newborn religious community. Furthermore, let's not forget that not all emperors harmed Christians, just as not all persecutions had strictly religious motivations. Peter was an exorcist while Marcellinus was a presbyter. To hide their death, and thus avoid the birth of devotional cults, it seems that the two were killed in a dense thicket that arose in this area two thousand years ago. It was only thanks to a Roman matron , however, that the two bodies were translated and moved to an underground environment, thus giving rise to the crypt and then the entire catacomb complex around it. Pure devotion, therefore, seems to be the basis of this dense network of underground tunnels, with its richly frescoed funerary chambers, its narrow tunnels in which, you have to imagine, the feeble flames of the terracotta lamps attached to the tuff rock walls flickered. An atmosphere certainly from other times that can only be felt in a catacomb in Rome!