It was not at all crowded when I visited. The site is well-preserved and I find it fascinating to see how people lived thousands of years ago. I think you definitely need either that or the traditional audio guide, or even a human guide, or you will have no clue what you are looking at. I purchased the app version of the audio guide. It is actually on the street down the block from the church: if facing the church (so church courtyard/ entrance on your right), keep walking down that block underneath the arches and it is just a minute down the street. ![]() I knew these were underneath a church so I thought the entrance was in the church. As of January, 2020, the site is closed Tuesdays & Thursdays, open other days 10 AM to 4 PM. Pay close attention to the opening hours and location. It is a beautiful underground archaeological site, unfortunately little known, but extremely interesting as it allows us to better understand the extraordinary stratification of an ancient city like Rome. These are twenty splendidly frescoed rooms, dated between the 1st and 4th centuries, originally shops and warehouses of an 'insula', a working class multi-storey building.įrom popular block (insula) to rich domus, up to the construction of the Christian titulus: these are the events of the monument that was born from the merger of a series of buildings that were joined together during the third century AD by a single owner and transformed into a elegant domus with representative rooms, decorated with valuable frescoes.Ī charming and evocative walk through the history of Romans living in the city through the ages. You can find the upper class Rome that lived in a "domus" and the lower class that lived in "insulae". The layers of the history of Rome are overlap in the "Case Romane del Celio”, 20 spaces between the 2nd-the end of 4th c., which are under the Basilica of Saints John and Paul. The Domus were discovered in 1887 by Father Germano di San Stanislao,rector of the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo at the time. ![]() ![]() The access to the houses is from Clivo di Scauro (Clivus Scauri), an ancient Roman street and once main axis of the hill, which has preserved part of its original layout. Together with the excavations of the church of San Clemente, the Roman houses of Caelian Hill represent one of the most fascinating places in underground Rome for the presence of original decorations and for the events that over the centuries have originated profound changes to the structure.The extraordinary state of conservation of the frescoed rooms and the very high artistic value and religious interest make the Roman Houses of Caelium a fundamental step in the knowledge of ancient Rome.
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