Rome Underground ToursUnderground Rome Map
Last reviewed September 2026
This underground Rome map plots the twenty places in the city where you can get below street level and walk around — four catacombs on the Appian Way and a fifth to the north, the Colosseum's service basement, Nero's buried palace, half a dozen churches stacked on older churches, an aqueduct behind the Trevi Fountain and a Roman cemetery under St. Peter's. Each pin carries what it costs, how long the visit takes and the weekday it shuts.
Quick answer What the map shows, and the two things it is really for
Twenty underground sites, colour-coded by what they are and sized by how many tours reach them. The map exists to answer two questions a list cannot: which of these are near each other, and which are open on the day you are in Rome. Ten of the twenty are on a bookable tour; the other ten you visit on your own ticket, and the page says so on every card.
Key takeaways
- See the whole picture on every Rome underground tour compared
- The Appian Way cluster is 8 km south — three catacombs within a 20-minute walk of each other
- Everything else is inside a half-hour walk of the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain or the Vatican
- Filter the map by a word — try Monday, free, catacomb or Colosseum
- Half the sites here are reached by no tour at all. What that means
Every Underground Site in Rome, Mapped
Twenty places you can get below street level in Rome, each with its ticket price, its closing day and the tours that reach it. Bubbles are sized by how many of the tours compared here stop at each one — a small circle means the industry does not go there, which is information rather than an omission. Coordinates verified against OpenStreetMap on 5 September 2026.
The Twenty Sites, With Their Access Rules
Every entry names the ticket, the length of the visit and the weekday the site closes. Ten of the twenty are reachable on a tour from the Rome underground tours comparison; the other ten are visited on your own ticket, and this page says which is which.
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Catacombs of St. Callixtus
3 of the toursThe oldest official cemetery of Rome's Christian community, holding the Crypt of the Popes and an estimated half a million burials.
Stops here: St. Callixtus ticket, $16, Catacombs + crypt, $57, Appian golf cart, $108
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Catacombs of San Sebastiano
2 of the toursA catacomb under its own basilica on the Appian Way, closed annually from 7 to 27 December 2026.
Stops here: Catacombs + crypt, $57, Appian golf cart, $108
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Catacombs of Priscilla
1 of the toursOver 13 km of galleries on two levels north of the centre, holding some of the most studied early Christian painting in Rome.
Stops here: After hours, $74
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Catacombs of Domitilla
2 of the toursThe largest and oldest of Rome's catacombs, dated from about 120 AD, and the only one holding a semi-underground basilica.
Stops here: English catacombs, $56, Catacombs + crypt, $57
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Catacombs of Sant'Agnese
No tourA quieter catacomb on Via Nomentana beneath the basilica of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura, run by the parish rather than a ticketing platform.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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Colosseum Hypogeum
3 of the toursThe two-level service basement that staged the spectacle above it: corridors, animal pens and the shafts that lifted scenery to the arena.
Stops here: Underground + arena, $386, Arena or underground, $177, Colosseum 3-in-1, $93
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Domus Aurea
2 of the toursNero's palace, buried by Trajan's builders and still being excavated — about 90 percent humidity, and the reason Renaissance painters coined the word grotesque.
Stops here: Domus Aurea VR, $81, Golden House, $99
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Case Romane del Celio
No tourAround twenty rooms of Roman housing beneath the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, with frescoes tracking the shift from pagan to Christian imagery.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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Stadium of Domitian
No tourThe arena Piazza Navona was built on top of and still traces the shape of — a Roman stadium for athletic contests, sitting under the paving.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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Basilica di San Clemente
No tourThree buildings stacked: a 12th-century basilica over a 4th-century church over a 1st-century Roman street and a temple to Mithras, about sixty feet down.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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Capuchin Crypt and Museum
4 of the toursSix chapels decorated with the bones of nearly 4,000 friars, arranged as a memento mori, with a Caravaggio-attributed Saint Francis in the museum.
Stops here: Crypts & catacombs, $69, Catacombs + crypt, $57, After hours, $74, Capuchin ticket, $25
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Santa Cecilia in Trastevere Crypt
No tourA crypt beneath a Trastevere basilica, holding fragments of the house identified as St Cecilia's and 19th-century neo-Cosmatesque decoration.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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San Nicola in Carcere
No tourA church built into three Republican-era temples whose bases sit below the floor — columns from the third century BC are visible from the street outside.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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San Crisogono
No tourA fifth-century early-Christian basilica underneath the later church in Trastevere, with 11th-century frescoes and a Roman sarcophagus.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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San Martino ai Monti
1 of the toursA third-century titulus beneath the basilica — a house used for Christian worship before churches were legal — plus a fresco cycle of the early popes.
Stops here: Crypts & catacombs, $69
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Vicus Caprarius, the City of Water
2 of the toursAn imperial house and the distribution tank of the Aqua Virgo, ten metres under the Trevi district — the aqueduct that has fed the fountain since 19 BC.
Stops here: Trevi express, $41, Trevi district, $51
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Mamertine Prison
No tourThe holding cell beside the Forum that prisoners were dropped into through a hole in the floor, later venerated as the cell of Peter and Paul.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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Tomb of the Scipios
No tourThe rock-cut family tomb of the Scipios at the start of the Appian Way, in use from the third century BC — Republican Rome rather than Christian.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
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Vatican Grottoes
1 of the toursThe papal tombs directly beneath the floor of St. Peter's, with surviving fabric of the fourth-century basilica Constantine built.
Stops here: St. Peter's, $38
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Vatican Necropolis (Scavi)
No tourA Roman street of the dead one level below the grottoes, ending at the tomb identified as Peter's. Hot, humid and airless, not a refuge from the heat.
No tour on this site reaches it — go on your own ticket.
How to Read This Map
Four colours, one size rule, and a filter that searches the tours as well as the sites.
The four categories
The colours split Rome's underground by what it actually is, because the visits are not interchangeable. Catacombs are Christian burial galleries run by the Pontifical Commission and entered only with a guide. Imperial sites are the buried fabric of ancient Rome — the Colosseum's hypogeum, Nero's palace, a stadium under a piazza. Church levels are the stack: a basilica on a basilica on a Roman street. Water covers the one site that is neither burial nor palace but plumbing, and still working.
Picking one of each makes a better day than picking four catacombs.
- Catacombs — €10 flat, guided-only, each closes on a different weekday
- Imperial Rome — the Colosseum hypogeum, the Domus Aurea, the Stadium of Domitian
- Church levels and crypts — San Clemente, the Capuchin bone chapels, Santa Cecilia
- Water and engineering — Vicus Caprarius and the Aqua Virgo behind the Trevi Fountain
Bubble size is tour count
A bubble grows with the number of tours that reach that site. The Capuchin Crypt is the biggest circle on the map because four separate tours go there; Santa Cecilia's crypt is a dot because none do.
That size difference is the honest shape of the industry rather than a ranking of the sites. Operators cluster where the tickets are easy to buy in bulk and the coach can park — which leaves a real underground Rome that no tour touches, and it is not the worse half.
The filter searches tours too
Typing into the filter matches site names, their descriptions and the titles of the tours that reach them, so "Domitilla" finds the site and "golf cart" finds the sites that tour visits. A status line counts the matches, non-matching bubbles fade out and their cards hide from the list below.
Useful queries: Monday to see what stays open on the worst day of the week, free for what costs nothing or nearly nothing, guided for the sites you cannot enter alone.
How the Sites Cluster
Rome's underground is not evenly spread. It sits in four groups, and the groups decide the day.
Four clusters, four different days
Distances below are straight-line from the cluster centre; the walking times are what the streets actually take. Coordinates from OpenStreetMap, checked 5 September 2026.
| Cluster | Sites | Getting there | Plan around |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appian Way | St. Callixtus, San Sebastiano, Domitilla, Tomb of the Scipios | Bus 118, 660 or 218 — 25 to 35 min from the centre | Three different closing days between them |
| Colosseum and Celio | Colosseum hypogeum, Domus Aurea, San Clemente, Case Romane, Mamertine | Metro B to Colosseo, all within a 15-minute walk | Domus Aurea is weekends only |
| Centre and Trevi | Vicus Caprarius, Capuchin Crypt, Stadium of Domitian, San Nicola in Carcere | On foot from the Pantheon or Barberini | Vicus Caprarius shuts at 17:00 and on Mondays |
| Trastevere and the north | Santa Cecilia, San Crisogono, Priscilla, Sant'Agnese | Tram 8 for Trastevere; Priscilla and Sant'Agnese are separate trips | Priscilla closes Mondays |
What that means for a two-day visit
Give the Appian Way its own half day, because the transfer is the cost — and if the day is a Wednesday or a Monday, check which of the three catacombs is actually open first. Pair the Colosseum cluster with a weekend if the Domus Aurea is on your list, since it opens on no other day.
The centre cluster fills gaps: Vicus Caprarius takes thirty minutes and sits behind the Trevi Fountain, and the Capuchin Crypt is under an hour and open every day. Both fit around lunch. The full closing-day table is on the homepage.
The Half of Underground Rome No Tour Reaches
Ten of the twenty sites on this map are not on any tour compared here. That is worth saying plainly.
Why the tours skip them
It is not that these sites are lesser. San Clemente is the single best demonstration of how Rome is stacked, and it is on no tour on this page. The reasons are commercial: a €4 ticket at Vicus Caprarius or a couple of euros at Santa Cecilia leaves no margin for an operator; parish-run sites like San Crisogono and San Nicola in Carcere have no group-booking system; the Vatican Necropolis admits about twelve people at a time through its own office and cannot be resold; and San Clemente caps daily admissions and does not provide guides at all.
So the map's small circles mark sites where you buy your own ticket, not sites to skip.
What to do with your own ticket
Four of these are genuinely easy and cheap, and between them they make a better afternoon than a second catacomb would.
- San Clemente — €10, open every day, online booking obligatory, three levels down to a Mithraeum
- Vicus Caprarius — €4, closed Mondays, thirty minutes, book at weekends by WhatsApp
- San Nicola in Carcere — a small ticket, three Republican temples under one church
- Santa Cecilia in Trastevere — a couple of euros at the gift shop, down a narrow staircase
- Mamertine Prison and Case Romane del Celio — separate small tickets, both self-guided
The one you cannot buy at all
The Vatican Necropolis is booked only through the Ufficio Scavi of the Fabbrica di San Pietro — not the Vatican Museums, not any platform, not this site. Groups run to about twelve people and confirmation can take weeks in the April-to-October season. There is a minimum age and published figures for it disagree, so ask the office.
Any listing promising guaranteed Scavi access should be read with that in mind. The St. Peter's underground tour on this site goes to the papal grottoes one level above, and says so.
Underground Rome Map Questions
How many underground sites can you visit in Rome?
Twenty are mapped here as places a visitor can get below street level and walk around. The catacombs alone number more than sixty around the city, of which seven admit the public — this map plots five of those, plus the imperial sites, the stacked churches and the aqueduct rooms behind the Trevi Fountain.
Which underground sites are near each other?
Four clusters. Three catacombs sit within a 20-minute walk on the Appian Way, 8 km south. The Colosseum hypogeum, Domus Aurea, San Clemente, Case Romane and the Mamertine are all within 15 minutes of Colosseo metro. Vicus Caprarius, the Capuchin Crypt and the Stadium of Domitian are central. Trastevere holds Santa Cecilia and San Crisogono. The cluster table.
Which underground sites are open on a Monday?
The Capuchin Crypt and San Clemente open every day. St. Callixtus and Domitilla also open on Mondays. Closed: San Sebastiano, Priscilla and Vicus Caprarius. The Domus Aurea opens on Saturdays and Sundays only. The full rotation.
Are all these sites on a tour?
No — ten of the twenty are reached by no tour compared here, and the map shows that with a small bubble. That includes San Clemente, arguably the best of them. Those are visited on your own ticket, and this section explains why.
Where do the coordinates come from?
OpenStreetMap, queried through Nominatim and checked by eye on 5 September 2026. Where a site had no reliable coordinate, it would be listed without a pin rather than given an invented one — on this dataset every site was locatable.
What is the cheapest underground site in Rome?
Vicus Caprarius behind the Trevi Fountain, at €4 full and €2.50 with a Roma Pass, free under 14. It is also one of the very few Rome undergrounds where a city pass buys anything — the catacombs and the Capuchin Crypt accept none. Why.