All showed clearly that this had once been a very famous historic crypt, the resort of many generations of pilgrims, and its situation answered exactly to what we read in the Pilgrim Itineraries, in the _Liber Pontificalis_, and in other ancient authorities as the situation of the original burying-place of S. Cecilia. The subjects, too, of the dim discoloured paintings pointed to the same conclusion. In the immediate neighbourhood of the sepulchral chamber De Rossi counted some twelve or thirteen inscriptions telling of Christian members of the “gens Cæcilia” who had been buried there--all testifying to the fact that originally this portion of the great group of the so-called “Callistus” Catacomb was the property of the noble house in question, and that probably at an early date it had been made over to the Christian Church in Rome. The saint and martyr therefore had been laid amidst the graves of other members of her family.[136] In the chain of testimony which has been brought together one link seems to call for an elucidation. How is it that Pope Paschal I failed at first to discover the sepulchral chamber of S. Cecilia, considering it lay so close to the famous Papal Crypt, and in fact communicated with it? The answer is that no doubt at some time previous to his research the crypt of S. Cecilia had certainly been “walled up,” “earthed up,” or otherwise concealed to protect this revered sanctuary from the prying eyes and sacrilegious hands of Lombards and other barbarian raiders. It must be remembered that for centuries the tomb of S. Cecilia had been one of the principal objects of veneration in this great cemetery. Signs of this later work of concealment were also discovered by De Rossi. De Rossi, in his summing up, comes to the conclusion that no doubt whatever rests upon the identification of the original burying-place of S. Cecilia, and that the sepulchral chamber discovered by him adjoining the Papal Crypt was the spot where her sarcophagus lay for centuries--the actual chamber which was subsequently adorned and made accessible by Pope Damasus; which was further decorated by several of his successors in the papacy; and which was visited and venerated by successive generations of pilgrims from all lands. In the ninth century the sarcophagus containing the sacred remains was translated as we have seen by Pope Paschal I, and brought to the ancient Basilica of S. Cecilia in the Trastevere, where it has rested securely ever since. In the year 1699 it was seen and opened and its precious contents inspected by Pope Clement VIII, by Cardinal Sfondrati, by Cardinal Baronius, by Bosio and others, as we have related. After the translation in the ninth century, the original crypt, in common with so many of the catacomb sanctuaries, was deserted and allowed to go to ruin--utterly forgotten until De Rossi rediscovered it and reconstructed its wonderful history.