Catacombs of Rome

Deep beneath the busy streets of Rome, Italy, are amazing underground tunnels called catacombs. Think of them like a huge, secret city for the dead! There are more than 50 of these places, and if you stretched out all the tunnels, they would be as long as 75 football fields put together!

Some of these tunnels are so old, they were dug out when dinosaurs were around... just kidding! They are super old, though, from almost 2,000 years ago.

Long, long ago, Romans weren't allowed to bury their friends and family inside the city walls. So, they built these underground tunnels. At first, people of different beliefs were buried here, like Christians, Jews, and people who followed Roman gods.

It was like a big neighborhood for everyone! The most famous catacombs are for Christians, and they are filled with amazing art painted on the walls.

The walls of the Christian catacombs are covered in beautiful paintings called frescoes. These paintings are super important because they show us what early Christian art looked like, way before your grandparents were born! They also found special gold glass coins with pictures on them.

Sadly, most of the bodies and these treasures have been moved out of the catacombs now, but the art is still there!

These underground tunnels weren't always known. Some were lost for hundreds of years and only found again very recently, like in the 1950s! Imagine finding a secret door in your backyard that led to a whole new world! Archaeologists, who are like treasure hunters for history, are still exploring and finding new parts of these amazing underground cities. It's like a never-ending mystery!