Rome Catacombs Tours

From $55 per person for a guided walk with skip-the-line entry, rising to about $113 for a private car and driver. Site admission on its own is €10. A tour buys the transport out past the walls, an English-speaking guide and a time slot you have actually reserved.

Yes. The Pontifical Commission asks for an online reservation, and San Callisto will not run a visit for fewer than two people. Between April and October the small-group departures fill several days ahead.

No, and that is worth knowing before you plan a morning around it. Every catacomb open to the public admits visitors on a guided visit only. There is no self-guided route and no audio-guide-alone ticket.

Entry to the catacomb and a guide, on every tour listed here. Most also include transport from central Rome, which is the part that saves you an hour. Gratuities and hotel pick-up are the two things most often left out.

Nearly all of them refund in full up to 24 hours ahead. Two one-hour Domitilla departures are non-refundable, and each says so on its own card and in the comparison table.

€10 full and €7 reduced at San Callisto and Domitilla, with the same tariff at Priscilla. Reduced covers ages 7 to 16, school groups, students of archaeology and art history up to 25, and clergy, all with proof. Children under 6 or 7 go free depending on the site.

In summer, yes. Visits leave in fixed groups roughly every half hour and each has a cap, so arriving without a reservation can mean waiting for the second or third departure. A booked slot removes that entirely.

Bus 118 runs from Circo Massimo and the Colosseum down the Appian Way to the San Callisto and San Sebastiano stops. Domitilla sits closer to Garbatella on Metro line B. Almost every tour includes the transfer, and on this route that is most of what you are paying for.

The time below ground runs from 30 minutes to two hours. The whole trip runs from one hour for an express Domitilla walk to six hours for the e-bike day along the Appian Way.

Knees and shoulders covered, at every site, and it is checked at the door. Take a light layer whatever the forecast says, because the galleries hold 15 to 16 °C all year. Flat shoes help on the worn steps.

The galleries themselves are not — stairs and narrow passages rule them out. Two golf-cart tours are described by their operators as wheelchair accessible above ground, and both are marked in the comparison table.

The galleries are narrow and low in places, and several operators say plainly that their tour is not the one for you. If you would still like to go, pick the shortest time below ground rather than the longest, and tell your guide at the start.

Very few, and this surprises most first-time visitors. The niches were cleared from the 8th century onwards when the relics were carried into the city's churches, so what you see is cut rock. If bones are what you came for, book a trip that pairs a catacomb with the Capuchin Crypt.

San Callisto, San Sebastiano, Domitilla, Priscilla and Sant'Agnese. Each closes on a different weekday, which is exactly why tour listings name two or three sites and choose by the date.

Domitilla, on the strength of its own measurements, and it holds the only semi-underground basilica in the city — dedicated to the martyrs Nereus and Achilleus and to St Petronilla. It is also the site most tours visit.

Not in the way the story is usually told. They were cemeteries, and well-known ones at that. What drew crowds underground was pilgrimage to the martyrs' tombs, not concealment.