# Interior view [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ARCHITECT, Italian]() - Date: 0201-0250 - Technique: Photo ## Commentary The Catacombs of San Sebastiano are a hypogeum cemetery in Rome, rising along Via Appia Antica. The catacombs have second-century pagan tombs along with Christian chapels. Above the catacombs was later built the church of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura. The area of the catacombs used to be a pozzolan mine; it was abandoned at the end of the 2nd century and then used by Romans as a place for pagan burial: simple graves for slaves and freedmen have been discovered, as well as monumental tombs, particularly in the so-called piazzuola \("little square"\), a circular compartment that had been an opencast mine, in which walls three mausoleums were dug. The presence in these mausoleums of typically Christian iconographies, such as the anchor and the fish, suggests that the mausoleums were used, at a later stage, also for the sepulture of Christians. Beside the piazzuola, the dig of the cemetery galleries was started in this period. The photo shows a view into a hypogeum, a subterranean burial chamber, from the complex of St Sebastian. ## Related artworks - [Aerial view]() - [Aerial view]() - [Apse of a basilica]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Basilica di Sant'Antonio: Chiostro del Noviziato]() - [Basilica Santi Nereo e Achilleo]() - [Ca' Foscari: Façade]() - [Chamber of the millers]() - [Chiesa dell'Incoronata: Interior of the dome]() - [Cloister gallery]() - [Detail of the façade]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()