Data Mining: Vismara, I cimitieri ebraici a Roma (1986)

Vismara is noted in other works as providing a comprehensive discussionof the geology of the area. He also includes a plan of a section of the catacombs discovered (and planned) by Muller in 1913, previously unknown to us (below).


Other information from Vismara. On location:

• Not far from the catacombs of Pontiana [the catacombs of Pontiana ARE planned by Bosio, a fact we discovered yesterday while browsing the 1659 edition of Bosio's Soterraneo]
• Between Pontiana catacombs and the present Trastevere rail station.
  
• Dug into the hillside of the Monteverde
• Agrees with the general discussion of the difficulties of study confronting early scholars because of instability in the galleries and landslides.
  
• Notes the long duree in which scholars lost track of the catacombs, citing the difficulty of Marucchi and Marchi in determining the location (just like us!) which led de Rossi to conclude in 1864 that the entirety if the catacombs had collapsed.
  
• The region discovered in 1904, Vismarra notes, was likely not the same one as noted by Bosio

On the portion discovered in 1913:

• A region in similarly precarious state of preservation
• Also on the via Portuense
• Documented in a breif notice including schematic plan (without orientation and lacking scale) with transcriptions of the epigraphi and brick stamps found therein.
  
• THIS region had already been destroyed by 1915 and Frey saw only a small portion of it.
  
• The remainder was permanently destroy in a collapse in 1929.

More to come from Vismara...