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The Catacombs of San Valentino (Italian: Catacombe di San Valentino) is one of the catacombs of Rome (Italy), placed at the 2nd mile of the via Flaminia, now in Viale Maresciallo Pilsudski, in the modern Pinciano neighborhood.
Italian archaeologist Antonio Bosio was the first to enter the catacomb, into the upper level (no longer visible today). The first archaeologist to excavate the remains of the catacomb was Orazio Marucchi (1852–1931): in 1878, while searching for the cemetery, he casually entered a cellar, at the foot of the Parioli hills, and he realized that it actually was a grave covered with pictures, though very ruined because of its change into a room for agricultural use. Marucchi himself also discovered the remains of the outer basilica, dedicated to Saint Valentine. New archaeological investigations were carried out in 1949 by Bruno Maria Apollonj Ghetti.
These excavations permitted to ascertain that the martyr Valentine was not buried into the catacomb, but directly into a pit outside it; on this subdial grave, Pope Julius I (336–352) built a former basilical structure, which was modified and enlarged by popes Honorius I (625–638) and Theodore I (642–649) and further restored in the following centuries until the last works carried out by Pope Nicholas II in the mid-11th century. To this century dates back the testimony of a cloister close to the basilica. The basilica was still existing in the 13th century and some remains were visible in the time of Bosio (1594).
It has also been ascertained that, during the 6th century, between the basilica and the catacomb an open-air necropolis rose, with mausoleums, tombs and sarcophaguses.
Nowadays hardly anything remains of the catacomb, especially due to the flood and the landslip that involved the area in 1986 and that made most of the galleries inaccessible. The only significant artifacts are the outer basilica and the ambulatory discovered by Marucchi in 1878 and placed at the entrance of the catacomb.
A controversial debate arose between academics and archaeologists during the 20th century about the figure of Saint Valentine: in fact, the date of February, 14 is consecrated to two martyr saints with the same name, the priest Valentine from Rome and the bishop Valentine from Terni. The theories can be summed up as follows.
The former basilica of Saint Valentine has three naves. Two apses, pertaining to different phases of the building, have been brought to light. There are also remains of an underlying crypt - probably due to the works carried out by Pope Leo III (8th–9th century) - covered in marbles, some fragments of which are still in loco.
The only significant room of the catacomb, and also the only that can be visited today, is the ambulatory discovered by Marucchi in the 19th century and converted into a cellar. This room was visited by Antonio Bosio and at that time it was still intact: therefore, thanks to the drawings that he commissioned, it is possible to decipher the remains of the frescoes still surviving. According to their make and kind, they can be dated between the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th century. Especially notable is a series of frescoes about episodes of the life of Mary , taken from the New Testament apocrypha, and the fresco of a Crucifix, a very uncommon example into a catacomb.
The Catacombs of Rome are ancient catacombs, underground burial places in and around Rome, of which there are at least forty, some rediscovered only in recent decades. Though most famous for Christian burials, either in separate catacombs or mixed together, Jews and also adherents of a variety of pagan Roman religions were buried in catacombs, beginning in the 2nd century AD, occasioned by the ancient Roman ban on burials within a city, and also as a response to overcrowding and shortage of land. The most extensive and perhaps the best known is the Christian Catacomb of Callixtus located near the Park of the Caffarella, but there are other sites, both Christian and not, scattered around the city, some of which is now engulfed in the modern urban sprawl.
Saint Valentine was a 3rd-century Roman saint, commemorated in Western Christianity on February 14 and in Eastern Orthodoxy on July 6. From the High Middle Ages his Saints' Day has been associated with a tradition of courtly love. He is also a patron saint of Terni, epilepsy and beekeepers.
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