060608


Roma Capitale
Zètema Progetto Cultura
060608 - Discover and buy tourist services, cultural offers and shows in Rome
You are in: Home » Culture and leisure » Cultural heritage » Archaeological heritage » Colombari di via Taranto (detto anche di via Pescara)
Typology: Catacombs

Address

Address: Via Pescara, 2
Zone: Quartiere Tuscolano (Roma sud)

Contacts

Opening times

At the present time not open at the visitors

Description

In 1932, during renovation work under the courtyard area of the houses of the Istituto Nazionale Immobiliare in Via Taranto, two decorated and painted columbaria were found.
The external appearance is similar for both, with a gable facade, barrel vault, travertine walls and a beaten earth carpet.
The work did not damage the structures and paintings, the columbaria were isolated with large quadrangular shafts in the direction of the doors, so as to allow easy access to the inside of the monuments.
The two columbaria are of the type frequently found in the 1st and 2nd centuries of the Roman Empire, i.e. small buildings consisting of a single room with a limited number of burial deposits.

First Columbarium
It is in opus reticulatum with well-preserved pictorial decorations, depicting gilded amphorae on which, from above, hang festoons tied with bandages, from which hang horns and cymbals. On the vault: squares with a sprig of rose in the centre with a blooming flower.
In the corners: vine shoots and pomegranate branches. The columbarium is dated to the first century A.D., Nero's era.

Second Columbarium
Almost square, it has a barrel vault and walls pierced by a series of niches, on the back wall a larger niche in the form of a small apse, it has a basin decorated with a shell, at the bottom a female figure with the symbol of the wheel: it is Tyche, Fortune, the goddess dispenser of good and evil in the fortunes of life. On the sides are smaller niches with tragic masks.
Walled up under the central niche is a relief depicting a child on horseback, holding the reins and moving towards a tree with hollow branches, around which a snake is coiled. Underneath, a table with an inscription commemorates "Venerian", the dead child, invoked as the tutelary deity of the underworld, i.e. as one of the Mani gods. In this case, therefore, Venerian has the role of the worthy deceased who intercedes for the living with the gods.
The vault, decorated with alternating hexagons and circles, bears in the centre a veiled female figure symbolising the soul of the deceased. In the hexagons: a sparrow on a red field above a flowering branch. In the circles: figures of Eros and Psyche on a turquoise field, recalling the myth of the union of the soul with the divinity.
The columbarium, which takes its name from the niches in the shape of a dove's nest, dates from around the second century AD.

Last checked: 2023-03-09 12:05