Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle

Is it worth the trip?

If you are in Verona, have a car and can plan a week ahead, yes. This is a Roman underground building still vaulted and painted, with the Christian chapel it became on its walls, and it is shown to a handful of people at a time.

But it is rationed. No more than 20 visitors a day get in, in groups of five including the guide, on four weekend rounds and on weekdays only by arrangement, and every visit is booked by e-mail in advance. Without a booking there is no visit. The talk is in Italian unless you ask for English, and photography is not allowed underground, so you leave with what you remember.

Getting there

Santa Maria in Stelle is a village in the Valpantena, about 10 km from Verona (Visit Verona); the address is Via Pantheon 1. No bus stop is mapped near the site, so plan on a car; a car park is mapped about 130 m away (OpenStreetMap). The group meets on the square in front of the church of Santa Maria Assunta a few minutes before the agreed time.

Book by e-mail to [email protected], giving the day, the time and the number of people. The operator asks for at least five working days’ notice on its visiting page and at least two days’ on its booking page, and takes bookings up to three months ahead; allow at least a week. There is no ticket: visitors are asked for a free-will offering towards the cost of opening the site, which is run by volunteers from the parish. Rounds can move or be cancelled when the church holds a wedding, a funeral, a baptism or a feast-day service, because church and hypogeum connect. It is about 15 °C and damp below ground, and the steps down have a handrail: the operator does not recommend the visit for anyone with serious walking difficulties (ipogeostelle.it, read 24 October 2026).

History

What the building was first built for is uncertain. On it.wikipedia’s account, it was made in the 3rd century, probably as a funerary monument: an inscription on the lintel of the entrance names Publius Pomponius Cornelianus, a Roman notable who held public office around Verona and Vicenza, as having built it with his wife and children, and he is probably the man shown in a statue in one of its niches. The naming of the whole family suggests a cenotaph of the Pomponii, but the spring that rises inside makes an aqueduct or a nymphaeum - rooms for the cult of the water nymphs, to whom Cornelianus was devoted - credible too. The volunteer association that runs the site tells it differently: an aqueduct of the Pomponii in the 1st century AD, turned into a nymphaeum by Cornelianus in the 3rd (the operator).

In the second half of the 4th century the space became a Christian building, first still a funerary one and from the early 5th century a chapel, and the mosaics and paintings belong to that change; the Old and New Testament scenes in the left room have suggested a place for teaching those preparing for baptism (it.wikipedia). The operator goes further and holds that Zeno, bishop of Verona, consecrated it as the first baptismal font outside the city walls.

The chapel stayed in use through the Middle Ages: Pope Urban III consecrated it for the liturgy on 7 June 1187 (the operator), and in the 15th century, when the church above was enlarged, the old entrance from outside was closed and the present stairway built (it.wikipedia). The watercolour surveys Gaetano Cristofali made in the 18th century record its rediscovery (it.wikipedia). Damp had kept the hypogeum in a critical state for years; its painted surfaces were restored between 2016 and 2019 (it.wikipedia), and since June 2018 a volunteer group from the parish, now an association, has opened the site to visitors (the operator).