When archaeologists in Rome at the end of the 19th Century began to excavate the Catacombs of Santa Priscilla, they hoped to find treasure: intricately carved monuments and vibrant frescoes of the type found in other ancient, underground cemeteries. Instead, they found devastation.

The marble sarcophagi they found inside had been broken into hundreds of pieces, wrote Rodolfo Lanciani, the scholar in charge of the dig. Lavish mosaics, a rare find in Rome’s catacombs, had been pulled from the walls, “the marble incrustations torn off, the altar dismantled, the bones dispersed.”

Some of the plundering, it turned out, had been carried out two centuries earlier – and on the Vatican’s orders. In the mid-17th Century, both Pope Innocent X and Clement IX sent treasure-hunters deep into the catacombs’ depths. Others may have destroyed the catacombs for a reason other than greed. Some think that early explorers vandalised the cemeteries believing they were cursed and had to be destroyed. Lanciani recounts that men picnicking at the site spoke of “the ghosts who haunted the crypt below, when suddenly the carriage which had brought them there, pushed by invisible hands, began to roll down the slope of the hill.” It fell into the river; oxen had to haul it out.

Few people think ghosts haunt the cemetery today. But the Catacombs of Santa Priscilla remain, in some ways, just as dangerous to traditional Church teachings. The discoveries there have sparked controversy over the role of women in the Church, and helped scholars re-evaluate the importance of the Virgin Mary in early Christian history.

Located on the Via Salaria, an ancient road leading north out of Rome, the Santa Priscilla catacombs aren’t as well known to travellers as those on the Via Appia. But they are among Rome’s most important. Thanks to the number of martyrs buried here as well as its sheer size, the underground cemetery was an important pilgrimage site throughout the Middle Ages.

Ladies' supper?

Today, its main draw for scholars and curious visitors is the Cappella Greca, or Greek Chapel. The space once held large, expensive marble sarcophagi, now lost. It also is lavished with an extraordinary number of frescoes – many that, unsually, feature women.