Watch your head! Watch your step! This dark tunnel has a low ceiling and uneven floors. Stay close to your guide too. You are walking through the Domitilla catacombs in Rome. (Catacombs aren’t combs for cats, though the words sound the same. They are vast, underground mazes of tombs!)

People were buried in these catacombs long, long ago—just a few hundred years after Jesus lived on Earth. What was it like to visit the catacombs back then? Archaeologists can help us find out. Right now, they are busy cleaning up in the catacombs. As they do, they study frescoes (wall paintings) in the labyrinth. The frescoes need some serious help. Over hundreds of years, algae has grown on them. The mineral calcium has built up on their surfaces. Oil lamps have left smoke stains. The archaeologists use lasers to clear the grime away. A painting of Jesus and His apostles shows clearly underneath. The researchers uncover paintings of Daniel and the lions and Noah’s ark too.

Tombs near these paintings belonged to Christians. Christians in early Rome were often poor. They did not always have money for burial. In the catacombs, they could bury people close together less expensively. They used frescoes to show who they were and what they valued: the true stories revealed in the Bible. But many of the crypts have frescoes that are blotted out. During the Middle Ages, people cut them out and stole them!

Archaeologists will fix up only a few parts of the Domitilla catacombs. Restoring the whole maze would take a very long time. It stretches more than seven miles under the city. It goes four levels down. More than 26,000 people are buried inside!