Scavi

The Scavi tour offers a perfect, if counter-intuitive lesson in Marketing 101:

1) Severely restrict access

2) Create a strict process for obtaining access

3) Make that process totally mysterious

4) Intimidate inquirers into meek submission

And so, my friends, that is why you will find the famed Scavi Tour of the excavations under St. Peter’s to be one of the most frequently recurring topics on travel discussion boards on the web. Not the content of the tour, but the mysterious process of actually getting on it.

You must first submit a request, giving possible dates and time, and language of the tour. This is done via fax or email. The Scavi office then confirms that they received your request. Then you wait, and at some point, you receive a confirmation of your date and time. Then you have to pay, for which you receive your receipt, a copy of which you have to present at the time of the tour to get your tickets.

The Scavi page says very firmly – don’t call us to check your status. Don’t bother us, in other words. So inquirers sit in limbo, all over the world, waiting for the word, and totally in the dark as to when they should expect to hear something. I promise – at any given time on any travel discussion board there is an active thread with a title like "WHEN TO EXPECT SCAVI CONFIRMATION????" Some report not hearing anything for month. Ours was all wrapped up withing three weeks of my initial request, I think, but then we were shooting for off-season, and I gave them an entire week to work with.

It’s all very mystersious, but, whether it’s intentional or not, it certainly adds to the cachet of the tour. Not that it needs it, for it is, indeed, a vital experience on a Rome visit.

(And I have heard, somewhere, that there are often vacancies in tour groups – people don’t show up. So if you’re desperate and in the area, it never hurts to just turn up at the Scavi Office and see if there’s a spot.)

Ours were scheduled for Thursday, March 2. We had to go in 2 shifts, because children under 11 are not allowed, and those between 11-15 only with a parent. It’s easy to see why – it’s a rather intense, focused tour in mostly tight spaces in which you are right up against rather valuable archaeological work. It’s not handicapped accessible either, in case you’re wondering. Narrow paths, steps, difficult to navigate.

So, at 9:15, Katie and I reported to the Swiss Guard, said, "Scavi" and waved our letter. Over to the Scavi office where, contrary to expectations, we were not met by a large woman in a uniform and a snarl, but a small, polite man, who noted who we were, as well as Michael, who would be coming in the next tour, and said "no problem" – he wouldn’t have to provide any further documentation when he showed up.

We joined a small group – I think there were about 10 of us all together, led by a very professional middle-aged guide, who I believe, from her accent, was Dutch. I’m not going to go step by step through the tour – for that, as well as some theological and spiritual reflections on the meaning of the excavations, read this chapter from George Weigel’s Conversations with a Young Catholic entitled "The Scavi of St. Peter’s and the Grittiness of Catholicism." I had Katie read it the night before we went, and I think it certainly deepened her appreciation.

Not that she needed much help – as per usual, the work of an excellent tour guide does wonders in keeping the interest of a teenager high. It was fascinating to watch her – at every stop, Katie would somehow, unconsciously, move to very front of the group, right in front of the tour guide, and stand there listening, enraptured.

And she was good – very clipped and mannered and practiced. She introduces us to the history of the excavations – begun in the 1930’s, continued during the war, and kept secret. The history you’re walking through, 30 feet under the altar of St. Peter’s, is the history of the basilica – the cemetery that Constantine filled in when he built his basilica on top of the place that tradition and pilgrims maintained Peter was buried. And not just a cemetary – a "city of the dead:"

In Roman times, the term “Vatican” (possibly the name of an early Etruscan settlement) referred to a large tract of land that stretched westward from the banks of the Tiber, beyond the boundaries of the ancient city. The north side of a narrow lane that climbed away from the Tiber towards the heights of the Mons Vaticanus (Vatican Hill) was lined with burial vaults, and funerary monuments were later installed on the southern side. From 130 to 300 A.D., a double row of magnificent mausoleums was built over the cemetery. The tombs resembled miniature versions of the houses of the living, with brick facades, frescoed walls, mosaic floors and portals bearing inscriptions. Some even had staircases and small porches.

The catacombs are in marvelous shape, one more example, as the guide tells the story of the Romans’ relationship to the dead, of the coherence of ancient life, as they accept the reality of what we deny and shut away. There are mosaic remnants, sarcophogi and fascinating inscriptions – one which details the life span of the interred down to the hours. The Christian Creep is evident, as the monuments slowly begin to incorporate Christian symbols and sensibilities into the mix. There is an ancient fresco depicting Christ, racing across the sky in a chariot, paired with other imagery, clearly evoking Jonah (one of the early frequent images used to evoke Christ) . From another good article:

Christian symbols predominate in the tomb of Cristo-Sole (Christ as the Sun). In a mosaic that has given rise to the tomb’s name, Christ is depicted as a kind of sun god in a horse-drawn chariot, with sunbeams radiating from his head. Other Christian imagery present in the tomb include images of a fisherman and Jonah and the whale.

The largest tomb in the necropolis belonged to the wealthy relatives of a freedman, Gaius Valerius Herma, and is embellished with both pagan and Christian symbols. Such pagan figures as Apollo and Diana are found in the tomb, but a Christian Chi-Rho symbol (Chi and Rho are the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ) appears on a tablet that bears the name Flavius Statilius Olimpius.

The key moment in the tour, however, revolves around Peter. What the excavation revealed, beyond doubt, was the rationale for Constatine’s Basilica. In the second century, a "trophy" or marker was erected over the place where pilgrims had been venerating Peter’s grave. In the fourth century, Constantine enclosed this trophy and constructed an altar over it. All of this was covered up and essentially forgotten in the 16th century, when the present St. Peter’s began construction – until the 1930’s, when the excavations began…and found them. And at the end of the tour, you can see, at a safe distant, and from a certain angle – the edge of the trophy, the corner of Constantine’s altar and other structure, and then, turning a corner, some clear plastic boxes which contain human remains – the bones that were found – every part of a human being except the feet, giving credence to the legend that Peter’s body was removed from his cross in haste, only by cutting off the feet, and in turn lending credence to the strong possibility that this was, indeed Peter.

What’s not in doubt is that this is the place, from the earliest centuries of Christianity, where Peter was venerated. And you can look up – way up – and see the dome of St. Peter’s above you, and if you can stretch your mind around it – not hard to do at the moment – you can see, touch and feel the connection between past and present, bound together by the witnesses who testified to and died for the truth of Jesus as Lord.

"You are Peter," the guide said crisply, "And upon this rock I will build my Church." She paused. "This." Pause again. " – is the rock."

And we shuffle out, above into the light, into the bustle of pilgrims and tourists, the messiness of human life, the hope and faith in what this fisherman saw and Who he knew.

From Weigel:

But here, too, the scavi help us get to the deeper truth of Catholic things. Although the early Church insisted on including weakness and failure in the narrative of its first years and decades, the story line of the New Testament — of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles — is not, finally, a story of failure, but of purified love transforming the world. To be sure, that transformation comes with a price: imagine Peter, in the agonized moments before his death, looking at that obelisk we can see today, and you can understand that none of this is easy. Then consider all those pilgrims who, like Peter, were seized by the truth of Christ and who have come, over the centuries, to place themselves in the presence of Peter’s remains. Pious nostalgia? Raw curiosity? I don’t think so. Whether articulate or mute, what those millions of other lives are saying, as they pray in the scavi or over the scavi, surrounded by the baroque magnificence of the basilica, is that failure is not the final word. Emptiness and oblivion are not our destiny. Love is the final word. And love is the most living thing of all because love is of God.

To know that, and to stake your life on it, is to have been seized by the truth of God in Christ — amid and through, not around, the gritty reality of the world.

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