Vatican Museums

From the second half of the first century A.D. until the first decades of the second century A.D., all the free spaces in the burial ground were occupied by new tombs and the area was reorganised with the creation of terraces along the side of the hill, and small squares on which the individual tombs faced. Since some of the tombs had been buried due to ground subsidence, it became necessary to build new brick tombs; these were larger than the previous ones and had elegant stucco and painted decorations. Four medium-sized tombs, built in rows and aligned following the route of the Via Triumphalis, were positioned to contain the slope, where it had been devastated by a major landslide.
In this period, the practice of interment began to appear. Tombs which often appeared as mixed rite burial chambers, contained both cinerary urns and spaces for interment (formae), either below the surface of the floor or in the walls, inside small arches (arcosolia). Sometimes the remains were placed directly into the pits dug into the ground, or inside sarcophagi positioned outdoors close to the tombs.