ROME, THE old hands always say, is a palimpsest. For folks like you and me, that means layer upon layer of history, buried right there in the Eternal City clay. Via Silvio D’Amico in the Ostiense neighbourhood of southern Rome makes the point.
At first glance, this seems to be an ordinary, business-type suburb, distinguished only by some ugly 1950s-era office blocks. The point is that when one of those blocks, which houses a huge insurance company, came to be built, it was discovered to be sitting over the site of one of the most significant catacombs in ancient Rome, the Santa Tecla catacombs.
This was the site where last year archaeologists, working on behalf of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, discovered what is believed to be the earliest known icon of St Paul, just a few hundred metres from the Basilica of St Paul Without The Walls.
Yesterday, those same experts unveiled further discoveries, taking the world’s media down into the catacombs to see for themselves the earliest known icons of apostles Andrew and John.
The images are all to be found on the ceiling of the burial tomb of a decidedly upmarket Roman noble lady who lived towards the end of the fourth century. Andrew, John, Peter and Paul each occupy a corner on the ceiling. One of the most interesting aspects of these discoveries is that they were made possible by a sophisticated, purpose-oriented laser system.
Dr Barbara Mazzei explained that when she and her team set about restoring the Santa Tecla frescoes two years ago, their biggest problem was the high humidity deep down in the catacombs. Indeed, the point is well made because, while walking around the catacombs, I happened to touch a metal railing on one of the walkways.
It was wet with humidity.
So too were the frescoes. So much so that they just looked like a puddle-dirty fuzz.
This is where the laser steps in. It has been programmed to remove centuries of damp-induced incrustation by firing a sort of microscopic jet of hot air on the frescoes.
It is programmed by colour, which means that as soon as it comes across another colour, it simply stops, leaving you with a sparkling, cleaned-up 1,700-year-old fresco.
Inside the burial chamber, which is so small that it can house only five hacks per viewing, the quality of the frescoes is quite remarkable, thanks to the laser.
Dr Mazzei says that this innovative restoration work, done for the relatively modest cost of €60,000, is vastly superior to traditional practices of restoration which, to a large extent, relied on a sensitive use of water and elbow grease.
Not surprisingly, Prof Fabrizio Bisconti calls these frescoes one of the “most significant expressions of early Christianity” ever found,
They are indicative of the well-established cult of the early martyrs, since St Paul himself is believed to have been buried just metres away.
For visitors to Rome, however, the bad news is that the Santa Tecla catacombs are so small and delicate that they are not open to the general public.