What Lies Beneath Our Feet?

    Give me a backpack and a pain of sneakers, and I'm off for an adventure. If I were to critique one major flaw of Penn State, it would be that I can never leave and explore the unknown. Call me spoiled, but ever since I was fifteen, I have had the privilege of living overseas and exploring all the famous, and even obscure, locations around Europe. For this reason, I would like to journal some of my favorite locations, and give a little background on their history.

     My love for traveling occured the moment we landed in Rome, Italy. It might sound a bit cliché, but it is not the Coliseum or Spanish steps that grasped my attention.  It was the mazes ofunderground tunnels were used to bury thousands of bodies that motivated me to spend three hours of examining the archeological finds from thousands of years ago at depths that greatly constricted my breathing abilities.

    

     In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the scene at the library marks a spot on the ground through which Indiana Jones must dig to reach the catacombs of Venice. At the end of the movie, those catacombs lead him the Holy Grail. Just to clarify Hollywood’s tendency of stretching the truth in many of their films, there are no catacombs in Venice. They are all located much further south, mostly in Rome and Naples, and the Calabria region as well.

     Located on the outskirts of Rome, these passageways were intended as a burial place for early Christians as well as pagans. Miles of tunnels were cut into the sides of mountains to be used as burial chambers. The Roman catacombs contain thousands of these “graves,” all stacked one on top of the other. Along the walls are numerous remains of frescos, which give us some insight into the burial practices of the ancient Romans. Crypts and tombs of martyrs were spread throughout the catacombs, and there was great veneration for these holy places on the part of the Christian community. Unfortunately,  all Christian catacombs in Rome are property of the Catholic Church, and special permission from the Vatican is needed to even get a glimpse at these sites.

      What baffled me about these locations was how advanced BC civilizations really were.  Those cemeteries have stood the tests of time, being buried under debris and topsoil for centuries. The insulation used to line the walls has helped the tunnels from caving in. I still remember following some of the tunnels as they became smaller and smaller; at one point I was forced to crawl on all fours to connect to another catacomb.

     I love puzzles. Perhaps that’s why I loved touring these catacombs. It felt like a maze that I could get lost in for days. With over sixty catacombs in Rome, I would need some time to travel through the underground world. As eerie as it might seem, I am not one of those people that goes to a graveyard at night to tell ghost stories. I am simply fascinated with history, and just how much is still undiscovered, just waiting to be dug up.

sources:http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/destinations/italy/0200catacomb.htm