Catacombs of Rome and the Appian Way

Rome’s four catacombs, and the two on the Appian Way

Four of Rome’s catacombs, the tunnels where the city’s early Christians buried their dead, are open to visitors, and you only go down with a guide. Two of them, St Callixtus and San Sebastiano, stand on the Appian Way, the Via Appia Antica, a short walk apart on the same stretch of the old Roman road. If you want the catacombs and the road in one outing, that’s the pair to choose from.

The other two are elsewhere. Domitilla is off the road, on Via delle Sette Chiese, and Priscilla is across the city, on Via Salaria in the north, so it makes a trip of its own. Each of the four has a weekly closing day, with San Sebastiano and Priscilla both closed on Mondays, and on Sundays all four are open.

Catacomb tickets: the guided tour comes with them

Since nobody goes down on their own, every catacomb ticket is a ticket for a tour, and what you choose at checkout is the language. The St Callixtus ticket costs €15 with a 40-minute tour in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish, and children aged 7 to 16 pay €12. At all four catacombs, children aged 6 and under go in free.

St Callixtus asks visitors to book online, and the ticket we sell is issued by the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, the agency authorised to sell the catacomb’s online bookings. On the day, get there 10 minutes before your tour and hand in the voucher at the ticket desk. Like the other three below, it can’t be refunded or moved to another date.

The other three tickets, priced in the cards above, work the same way. San Sebastiano’s comes with a 30-minute tour in the same five languages, and San Sebastiano recommends booking. On Domitilla’s the tour lasts an hour, in English, German, Italian or Spanish, and Priscilla’s is a 45-minute tour in English or Italian, in groups of up to 25. Priscilla, like St Callixtus, only takes visitors who have booked.

The Roma Pass on the Appian Way: the park, not the catacombs

The catacombs belong to the Church, and none of the cards in our comparison of Roma Pass and Rome’s other city passes includes a plain entry to any of them. Go City includes a catacomb tour with transport and the Turbopass gives a discount on one, while the Roma Pass covers the archaeological sites along the Appian Way instead.

With the Go City Explorer Pass, the catacomb tour leaves at 9:30, 10:30, 13:30 and 14:30 every day except 25 December and brings you back to the centre on an open-top bus. There’s nothing to book in advance: you reserve your place at the Touristation desk, Piazza d’Aracoeli 16, on your first day, and latecomers aren’t taken. Go City doesn’t say which catacomb the tour visits.

The Turbopass tour spends half an hour underground, in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish. It goes to St Callixtus from Thursday to Tuesday and to Domitilla on Wednesdays, when St Callixtus is closed, and there are no tours on 25 December, 1 January or Easter Day.

On the Roma Pass, the 48-hour card has one included entry and the 72-hour card two, and the 72-hour Omnia Card gets you into the park through the Roma Pass inside it. Two of the park’s sites, Capo di Bove and the Tombs of Via Latina, have been closed for restoration since 22 June 2026, with no date to reopen, so what’s open is the tomb of Cecilia Metella, which shares its site with the Castrum Caetani, and the Villa dei Quintili.

Getting to Rome’s catacombs by metro and bus

The two Appian Way catacombs are a metro ride and one bus from the centre. Take metro line B to Colosseo or Circo Massimo and change to the 118, which stops at Catacombe di San Callisto and again at Basilica e Catacombe di San Sebastiano. Since the two are a short walk apart, you can see one and walk on to the other.

From metro line A there are two other ways down. From San Giovanni, bus 218 goes to the Fosse Ardeatine stop, 300 metres from San Sebastiano, and from Arco di Travertino the 660 stops at both catacombs. Bus 714 to Piazza dei Navigatori also works for St Callixtus, followed by a 1 km walk.

Domitilla shares that stop: buses 714, 160, 30 (the 130F on Sundays) and 670 go to Piazza dei Navigatori, and from there it’s a 10-minute walk. For Priscilla, in the north, take the B1 branch of metro line B to S. Agnese/Annibaliano and walk 15 minutes, or buses 63, 310 or 92.

If you’d rather not change buses, the tour with transfer, from €48.02, takes you to St Callixtus on an open-top bus from the centre and back, with skip-the-line entry and a guide underground.

Catacomb opening hours, the lunch break and the cold

Three of the four close for lunch: St Callixtus and Domitilla from 12:00 to 14:00, and Priscilla from 13:00 to 14:00. San Sebastiano stays open from 9:15 to 17:15 without a break, so it’s the one to aim for if you reach the Appian Way around midday.

The closing days leave something open every day of the week. On a Monday, St Callixtus and Domitilla are both open, and on a Wednesday you still have San Sebastiano on the same road.

Inside Rome’s catacombs: what each guided tour shows

The galleries themselves are the reason you go down, but each catacomb’s tour leads to something of its own, from the tombs of popes at St Callixtus to the pagan mausoleums at San Sebastiano.

Walking and cycling the Appian Way

Back above ground, the road itself is the other half of the visit. The Appian Way was begun in 312 BC by Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who gave it his name, and it ran south to Capua, 195 km away, and later on to Brindisi, about 540 km from Rome. In July 2024 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as “Via Appia. Regina Viarum”, the queen of roads.

You can walk the road at any time, with no ticket, and the stretch owned by the state runs for 12 km from number 195. Travel writer Rick Steves’ guide says the road closes to traffic on Sundays and public holidays, though the park’s own pages don’t mention it. If it does, Sunday is the day to go, with all four catacombs open too.

By bike, you can rent at the Regional Park’s point at Via Appia Antica 58/60, at weekends from April to October, 9:30 to 19:00, and until 17:00 from November to March. We sell a one-hour bike from €5 and a full day from €40, with an e-bike option that costs more. Bring some patience for the old paving stones, which some riders find too uneven.

Along the road you pass the tomb of Cecilia Metella, a round mausoleum from the 1st century BC and one of the park’s sites that the Roma Pass covers. The park has its own hours, and its tickets are sold on the Musei Italiani site and app, or at machines on site that take cards only.

The park opens Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00, and closes at 16:30 from November to February, at 18:30 in March and October and at 19:15 from April to September. The last entry is 30 minutes before closing, except at the Villa dei Quintili, where it’s 75 minutes.

Without a card, tickets are €8 a site, or €12 for the park ticket, which is valid for seven days.