In central Pécs, a visitor centre leads below today’s streets to the remains of the cemetery of Sopianae, a Roman provincial town in Pannonia. The principal monuments date mainly to the fourth century, when Christian communities built burial chambers and memorial structures on the city’s northern cemetery grounds. The site is not a single underground church or a set of catacombs: it is a group of distinct tombs, chapels and mausoleums, some with two levels. Their arrangement offers evidence of how burial and commemoration could occupy the same building, with a chamber below and a memorial space above.
The visitor centre presents six two-storey burial chambers, identified by Roman numerals I, II, III, IV, XIX and XX, as well as two larger single-room structures: Cella Septichora and Tomb V. They form part of a much wider archaeological landscape. UNESCO’s inscribed property comprises 16 monuments, while more than 500 smaller graves have also been identified around them. Other monuments, including the Early Christian Mausoleum, are separate components of the Pécs heritage site, so a ticket or visit to one location should not be confused with access to every archaeological place in the city.
