The Necropolis tour under the Vatican is a very exclusive thing. You have to get permission from the Vatican to see it. And, they don’t allow pictures. ⁣

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My interest is in history, I’m not religious in any way, but if you like history like I do then this is really a holy grail so to speak. In the 1st Century this area was Caligula’s Circus, it had that giant obelisk in the center of it where all kinds of games would take place as well as hideous tortures and executions. It was under Nero’s reign after the great fire that tore up Rome occurred which he blamed on the small sect of outsiders, the Christians. He started arresting them and executing them here. Saint Paul was famously crucified upside down here and the tour shows an approximate spot of where this happened in the area just south of the Vatican.

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Next his body would have been recovered by his followers and dragged a short distance to a pagan burial ground that was on an adjacent street to the Circus. Here there were already small shrines of burials of various non-Christians, one Egyptian, several recognizable pagan tributes, including one titled Lucifer. Of course, historically speaking this isn’t the Lucifer from the New Testament since it wasn’t really written yet and these burials and shrines would have been completely unaware of any verbal teachings. ⁣

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The Vatican is built on top of that street with all its shrines and burial chambers still intact below it. The tour takes you underneath to that 1st Century street. It’s dark and cramped and the air is stale. I was the only non-believer on the tour, I waited for the guide to mention the Lucifer shrine if nothing else to dispel the stigma, it would have been a Sumerian god, the Light Bringer or Venus Bringer-of-Dawn so it’s really not as scandalous as it sounds but the guide never brought it up and I didn’t want to offend anyone's beliefs by asking. ⁣

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In the end you get to see the bones of Saint Peter. Yellow with ago and not like a skeleton but a pile really. ⁣

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The obelisk was moved from the Circus to the center of Saint Peter’s Square. Hanging upside down, the guide said, it may have been the last thing Peter saw.