Catacombs in Syracuse

Is it worth the trip?

Yes. With the amphitheatre, this is one of the two Roman-era sights in Syracuse that are worth a visit on their own. Unlike most Roman remains in the city, it is complete enough to read as it was used: you walk along the galleries between the tombs rather than looking at a plan of foundations. Two things to know. You cannot wander on your own, because every visit is a guided tour, and little of the wall decoration has survived, so what you see is mostly the rock-cut cemetery itself. It sits next to the Paolo Orsi archaeological museum, which holds the splendid sarcophagus of Adelphia found here (de.wikipedia), so the two make an easy pair.

Getting there

The entrance is at Largo San Marciano 3 (the operator), in the Akradina district (it.wikipedia), about 1 km in a straight line from Siracusa railway station and about 100 m from the Paolo Orsi museum. The Neapolis archaeological park, with the theatre and amphitheatre, is under 1 km away. Bus stops named Via Von Platen and Teocrito are about 165 m away, and a free car park lies about 160 m from the site (OpenStreetMap).

The visit is by guided tour only, in Italian or English, and includes a virtual-reality presentation of reconstructions of the spaces as they were. A ticket costs €12 plus a €2 service fee; the reduced ticket, for ages 6 to 15, students of archaeology, architecture, art history and cultural heritage, and teachers, all with proof, is €9 plus €2, and under-sixes go free. Online sales are suspended, so buy at the ticket office on site. Tours leave as soon as a group is large enough.

The ticket office is open daily 09.30–12.30 and 14.30–17.30 from April to June and in September and October, and 10.00–13.00 and 14.30–17.30 in July and August; in March it is closed on Mondays. The catacomb closes from 7 to 31 January and reopens in stages through February (Secret Siracusa, the operator, read 20 October 2026). The operator gives no hours for November and December; the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology’s own page for the catacomb lists Monday to Saturday 09.30–12.30 and 14.30–16.30 outside the summer. Check before travelling.

The other catacombs

Syracuse has three catacomb complexes, each with its own entrance. In order of age they are Santa Lucia, Vigna Cassia and San Giovanni (de.wikipedia).

Santa Lucia lies under the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, where the city’s patron saint is said to have been beheaded in the 4th century. It came into use around 220, has a complex plan on three levels, and was later turned into a place of worship: a Byzantine oratory there holds a fresco of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, dated to the 8th century, and was in use until the 13th (de.wikipedia). The operator runs guided tours from Piazza Santa Lucia 26, closed on Sundays, for €10 (€7 reduced) (Secret Siracusa).

Vigna Cassia, named after the owner of the vineyard above it when it was found, has three regions. Two began in the 3rd century, from around 256, and the third, Marcia, in the 4th (de.wikipedia; the Pontifical Commission). Its Santa Maria di Gesù region grew out of an abandoned Hellenistic aqueduct whose walls were cut with graves (de.wikipedia), and one of the underground tombs above the cemetery, hypogeum M2, keeps paintings of two scenes from the story of Jonah, Daniel in the lions’ den and the raising of Lazarus (the Pontifical Commission). The Commission lists it as open on weekdays, 11.00–13.00 and 14.30–17.00, at Via Augusto von Platen 38, while it.wikipedia describes it as closed apart from special openings, and the operator’s ticket site does not offer it: check before going.

History

San Giovanni is the youngest of the three. It is the largest communal cemetery made in Syracuse after the Peace of the Church of 313 (the Pontifical Commission), and was dug between 315 and 360 (it.wikipedia; Pleiades), around the tomb of Marcian, whom tradition makes the city’s first bishop, sent by Saint Peter (de.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). By the same tradition the apostle Paul preached to the first Christians of the West in the crypt beside it (it.wikipedia). It was planned almost entirely around one kind of tomb, the arched recess for several burials; the rotundas were made to give room to leaders of the Church and of the empire (the Pontifical Commission). Five of these rotundas served first to carry out the spoil while the galleries were dug, then as chapels and to bring in light and air (de.wikipedia). It was in use through the 4th and 5th centuries, and inscriptions referring to Goths still appear in the first decades of the 6th (the Commission dates them 491–535).

Published dates for the church over Marcian’s tomb differ: de.wikipedia has the first cathedral of Syracuse built there in the 4th century, the operator dates the basilica to the 6th. Marcian’s remains were moved into a niche in the 6th century and taken to safety from the Arabs in the 9th, when the church was destroyed; the Normans rebuilt it, the earthquake of 1693 brought it down, and it was finally ruined in the Napoleonic wars (de.wikipedia). The catacombs were later disturbed by people searching for saints’ bodies and treasure (it.wikipedia). Pietro Della Valle described them in 1626, and Jean Houel and Vivant Denon visited in 1777 and 1778 (it.wikipedia). The sarcophagus of Adelphia was found in 1872, systematic excavation followed between 1893 and 1919, and in the Second World War the galleries served as air-raid shelters (de.wikipedia).