The ridiculous Moses

Close to Piazza della Repubblica there is the Moses fountain, inaugurated in 1589. Realised by Domenico Fontana, it is done in travertine and in the center there is an imposing statue of Moses. Moses, holding the Ten Commandments with his left hand, is pointing with his right hand to the water running below him, hinting to the miracle, described in the Bible, of the water gushing from a rock to quench the thirst of the Israel people. But when this miracle happened Moses still had to receive the Ten Commandments! For this trivial mistake and for the stubby features of Moses, the romans nicknamed this statue "the ridiculous Moses".

The catacombs of Rome

The catacombs of Rome are very ancient cemeterial areas digged in tufa, a kind of soft rock. The oldest ones are from the II century A.D. They were all digged outside the roman walls because during those times it was forbidden to bury people inside the city. When in 313 A.D. thanks to Costantine the christians were free to worship their god, many of them wanted to be buried in these underground cemeteries where many martyrs were placed years before. Centuries later the catacombs were abandoned and the relics of the martyrs were transferred inside many churches. For several centuries nobody knew anymore where the catacombs and their entrances were. It was just in the XIX century that they started to be explored sistematically. In the catacombs there were also beautiful cripts, like the cript of the popes in the catacombs of St. Callixtus. Some of the first popes of the christian history have been buried here.