CROSTAROSA, PIETRO. – Born on 25 February 1836 in Rome, he died there on 26 February 1902. He was a Liberian canon, prefect of the Christian Museum of the Vatican Library, and secretary of the Commission for Sacred Archaeology for several years, during which he promoted important works in the Roman catacombs, such as the arrangement of the basilica of SS. Nereo and Achilleo on the Via Ardeatina, the excavation of the historic crypt of the
C. devoted himself above all to questions relating to early Christian architecture. The most important is the one mentioned above, Le basiliche cristiane, in the Dissert. della Pont. Accad. Romana di Archeol. of 1892, in which he sought to demonstrate that the origin of post-Constantinian places of worship was to be found in the basilicas of private palaces. In 1893 he published historical and juridical notes concerning Dei titoli della Chiesa Romana, and especially that of S. Lorenzo in Damaso and its rights over subsidiary churches. C. devoted particular care to the inventory of the seals impressed on the roof tiles of certain Roman churches, such as S. Maria Maggiore, SS. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti, and S. Croce in Gerusalemme, which he published in the Nuovo Bull. di Archeol. Crist. for 1896–97 and 1901. In this periodical he reported on the excavations carried out in the catacombs of Rome; in 1895 he published Osservazioni sul musaico di S. Pudentiana, with the aim of demonstrating that the buildings depicted in it should be regarded as nothing other than reproductions of the structures of the Domus Pudentiana, which extended along the Vico Patricio on the slopes of the Viminale; in 1899 and 1900 he inserted in it the report of the Scoperte in S. Cecilia in Trastevere.