The pit

Beneath this church lies the only Roman prison you can still go down into today. It isn't a block of cells but a round room that started life as a water reservoir, with a second chamber below it that could only be reached through a hole in the floor. Prisoners were lowered through on a rope, and they never came back out.

This wasn't a place to serve a sentence either. Anyone who ended up here was waiting for execution or simply starved to death. Vercingetorix, the Gaulish chieftain who led the revolt against Caesar, was held here for six years after his defeat and then strangled, and the Numidian king Jugurtha died here of deprivation.

Going down is worth it for one reason: the hole. You stand in the upper room and look through the same opening those men vanished into, and no description comes close to what that sight does to you. You will need a ticket.

We head down the steps to the wide street and follow it to the right, toward the column behind the railings.