Canal tombsIsola Sacra Menu

• Index
• Introduction
• Ostia
• Tomb types
• 100 tombs
• Canal tombs

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• 100

Earlier than the part of the necropolis with the described 100 tombs, in 1925 already a small cluster of tombs was found on the northern side of the Isola Sacra. These tombs are close to Portus, approximately 150 metres to the south-west of the Basilica of Saint Hippolytus. In antiquity the tombs formed a whole with the other graves of the necropolis, the so-called "100 tombs". They are at a distance of a few hundred metres from those tombs ¹.

Coming from Fiunicino Sud you find the Canal tombs in the Via Redipuglia. Along this street. When I noticed the tombs for the first time, I saw a small, bad railed excavation with a number of tombs. A large sign, which was completely faded, stood desolated at an unreadable distance away from the fence.
When I was working on the description of the great cemetery, I asked various archaeologists what they could tell me about this small cluster of tombs. The big silence started. It seemed like these graves had come forth from the ground yesterday and nobody had taken notice. After a lot of searching I got a photocopy with the description of a part of these tombs. These tombs, the green ones, are numbered on the map below. The other structures (in red) are reconstructed by myself from my own observation and by Google maps (for the size).

 The block of tombs is divided in two parts by a street running north-south.
The roofs of the tombs rise a couple of centimetres (!) above the modern ground level.
Some of the tombs have their entrances on the side of the street, others can only be reached via neighbouring tombs. There is no evidence that the latter tombs originally were part of the neighbouring tombs.

Many sarcophagi, paintings and inscriptions have been found. They are all stored in the depots. When the necropolis wasn't used anymore, the tombs changed into a place for garbage. Many fragments of pottery did not belong to the inventory of the tombs, but were broken tableware and refuse from the nearby harbour.
In 2008, when this was written, the canal tombs could not be visited. The vegetation covered the site again and the tombs seemed to wait for better times.

• Sources
• Russel Meigs - Roman Ostia, At the Clarendon Press 1973
• Guido Calza - Necropoli nell'Isola Sacra'(1940)
• Dr. Jan Theo Bakker.
• 
  notes
• 1: The name of this cluster, the 'Canal Tombs', has been given by myself, because of its location so near by the Canal of Traianus (the 'Fossa Traiana').