Notes on the survey of the Catacomb of San Senatore at Albano Laziale

The underground complex of the Catacomb of San Senatore is located at the fifteenth mile of the Via Appia, where the territory of Albano Laziale borders with that of Ariccia. The entrance opens in that section where the Regina Viarum, after crossing the historic centre of Albano and passing by the curious republican monument known as the Tomb of the Horatii and the Curiatii and the nearby monumental complex and cemetery of Santa Maria della Stella, begins a steep descent to the bottom of the valley. The Christian complex dates back to the 4th century AD at least, as confirmed by important surviving iconographic evidence. Presumed to be connected with other catacombs under the centre of Albano, it has been known in written sources for several centuries. After the medieval and Renaissance oblivion, it was rediscovered the second half of 17th century and reconnected to a monumental system that attracted the travellers of the Grand Tour. Such an urban system kept on growing up to XIX century, thanks to the cemetery built by the church in 1833 and used up to the cholera epidemic of 1867. Although studied and mapped between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the catacomb was in a state of semi-abandonment for decades. Only a collapse, at the end of the 1980s, convinced the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, then directed by the illustrious Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, of the need to carry out some excavation and consolidation interventions which determined the current state of the monumental site. At the entrance, a steep linear staircase leads into the basement of the current convent of the Discalced Carmelites, annexed to the church, where the ancient nucleus of the catacombs is located. From here, a series of underground perimeter rooms branch off. Some are excavated, some covered by the earth that came out of the collapses, some interrupted by recent consolidation walls of the buildings above. This paper presents the early results a historical research and architectural survey, the first carried out through digital technologies, which is part of a PRIN entitled Le strada di Pietra and dedicated to the ancient historical routes. It concerns not only with providing a faithful cartography of very irregular spaces in order to relate it to the overlying and neighbouring structures and to plan an organic project of enhancement, but also to develop an integrated method of documentation of the remaining pictorial fragments.