Cimitero delle Fontanelle

The Cimitero delle Fontanelle occupies a former tuff quarry on Via Fontanelle in the Rione Sanità of Naples. The cavern, shaped like a cathedral nave, was used as a mass burial place for victims of the plague of 1656 and of the cholera epidemic of 1836, as well as for the poor and for remains moved from overcrowded church crypts. The bones, estimated in the tens of thousands, were piled into long stacks along the walls. In 1872 a parish priest, Father Gaetano Barbati, organised the cleaning and sorting of the remains, and the ossuary became the centre of a distinctive Neapolitan folk devotion, the cult of the anime pezzentelle, or 'poor souls'. Local people adopted individual skulls, cleaned and sheltered them in small boxes and prayed for the soul of the anonymous dead in exchange for favours. Some skulls became locally famous, such as the Capitano and Donna Concetta, whose skull was said to sweat. The Church disapproved of the practice, and the cemetery was closed in 1969 under Cardinal Corrado Ursi. After years of neglect, volunteers from the neighbourhood restored and reopened the cemetery in 2010. The architecture is stark and monumental: three large tunnels of tuff form a vaulted space lit by daylight from the entrance and artificial lighting inside, with the skulls and small shrines arranged in rows and stacked in shelves and miniature houses. The site is not a museum with labels but a place of memory, and visitors are expected to behave respectfully. Entry is free, though donations are accepted, and the cemetery is open daily with set hours. It is close to the Catacombe di San Gennaro and the Sanità district's other sights, and the area can be reached on foot from Capodimonte.