Are there bones in the Catacombs of San Callisto?
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The custodians state it plainly: towards the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth, the popes ordered the relics of the martyrs and the saints removed to the city churches for security reasons. The popes buried in the Crypt of the Popes were translated out under Sergius II in the ninth century. St Cecilia’s relics went to Trastevere in 821, and what stands in her crypt now is a copy of the statue Stefano Maderno carved in 1599 — one reviewer who visited in 2023 wrote the word replica in brackets herself, correctly.
So the loculi you walk past are open and empty. I will not go further than that. The complex is more than 20 metres deep on several levels, most of it neither excavated nor open, and the guided route covers a small fraction of it behind gates. Anyone who tells you there are no human remains anywhere in San Callisto is telling you something no source supports.
If bones are what you came for
Then you are picturing the Capuchin Crypt, and you should go there instead. It is the Museo e Cripta dei Frati Cappuccini at Via Vittorio Veneto 27, under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione: a crypt beneath a Baroque church in the city centre, not a cemetery outside the walls, and not a catacomb. Around 3,700 remains, mostly Capuchin friars, are arranged along a corridor of roughly 30 metres flanked by six rooms; Turismo Roma puts it at nearly 4,000 and five chapels, so the counts are approximate either way.
It costs €10 full and €6.50 reduced with an audioguide included, opens every day from 09:30 to 13:30 and 14:30 to 18:30, takes about an hour, allows photography for private use, and sits at Barberini on Metro line A. Cheaper to reach than the Appia, open on the day San Callisto is shut, and it is the thing you were actually imagining. Two of the tours sold here pair the two, which is a sensible combination precisely because they are not the same kind of place — see how the Rome options compare.
What is down there instead
Architecture and paint. Corridors cut into tufo with niches stacked in the walls; the Crypt of the Popes, where nine popes were buried and the original Greek inscriptions of five of them survive; the Crypt of St Cecilia with its early-ninth-century wall paintings; five family chambers frescoed at the beginning of the third century with Baptism, the Eucharist and Jonah. In the Crypt of Lucina, Pope Cornelius lies under a CORNELIVS MARTYR inscription beside some of the oldest frescoes in the Roman catacombs.
I would argue the empty version is the better one. A wall of arranged bones is a piece of seventeenth-century display. An empty niche with a painted Good Shepherd beside it is the thing itself, left more or less as the people who dug it left it. The forty minutes, in order.
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Frequently asked questions
Can you see skeletons in the Roman catacombs?
Not at San Callisto. The niches there are open and empty, because the relics were moved into city churches at the end of the eighth century and the start of the ninth. The claim that Domitilla still has visible bones is widely repeated by travel writers and confirmed by no official source, so do not book on it. The seven catacombs compared.
Where can you see bones in Rome?
The Capuchin Crypt on Via Vittorio Veneto, under Santa Maria della Concezione: around 3,700 remains along a corridor of roughly 30 metres. It is €10 full and €6.50 reduced with an audioguide, open daily 09:30 to 13:30 and 14:30 to 18:30, and photography is allowed. It is a crypt under a church in the centre, not a catacomb.
Why are the catacombs empty?
Security. After the catacombs were sacked, the popes ordered the relics of the martyrs and saints moved into the city churches, and the marble slabs that sealed the niches have largely gone as well. St Cecilia’s relics went to Trastevere in 821. What is left is the architecture and the frescoes — which is still worth the trip, for the right visitor.