Catacombs are human-made subterranean passageways for religious
practice. Any chamber used as a burial place is a catacomb, although the
word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire.
Many are under cities and have been popularized by stories of their use
as war refuges, smugglers' hideouts, or meeting places for cults.
The first place to be referred to as
catacombs was the system of underground tombs between the 2nd and 3rd milestones of the Appian Way in Rome, where the bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul, among others, were said to have been buried. The name of that place in late Latin was
catacumbae, a word of obscure origin, possibly deriving from a proper name, or else a corruption of the Latin phrase
cata tumbas, "among the tombs". The word referred originally only to the Roman catacombs, but was extended by 1836 to refer to any subterranean receptacle of the dead, as in the 18th-century Paris catacombs.
In recent years unique strains of bacteria have been discovered that
thrive in catacombs, inducing mineral efflorescence and decay. These
include Kribbella sancticallisti, Kribbella catacumbae, and three types of non-thermophilic (low-temperature) Rubrobacter.
To the left is a painting of a procession in the San Callistus catacombs in Rome.
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