Fontanelle Cemetery

The cemetery is a vast cave cut into the tuff of the Fontanelle valley. For centuries the valley's quarries supplied building stone to the city. When the city's churches ran out of burial space, bodies began to be brought to the old quarries.

The Comune's history of the site describes the scale. It traces the ossuary to the 16th century, when Naples was hit by riots, famines, earthquakes, eruptions and epidemics, and the isolated quarry took the victims. The plague of 1656 was the worst: sources quoted by the city put the dead buried here at 250,000, out of a population of 400,000, while others say 300,000. In 1764 famine victims were buried here, and in 1837 the cholera dead. The same year, bones from the city's parish and confraternity cemeteries were carted in.

In 1872 the priest of Materdei, Don Gaetano Barbati, and local women put the bones in order, in the arrangement you still see, all anonymous except two: Filippo Carafa, Count of Cerreto, who died in 1797, and Donna Margherita Petrucci, who died in 1795, both in glass-fronted coffins. The three aisles are known as the aisle of the priests, of the plague victims and of the poor, the pezzentelli.

What makes the Fontanelle more than a charnel house is what Neapolitans did next. From the late 19th century people began to "adopt" a skull: they cleaned it, gave it a name revealed in a dream, and prayed for the soul, one of the anime pezzentelle, the poor souls in Purgatory. In return the soul was expected to help the living: a favour, a cure, a lucky lottery number. The city's page calls the offering of prayer the refrisco, the refreshment of the soul.

The Church did not approve. In 1969 Cardinal Ursi ordered the ossuary closed, judging the cult to have become fetishism. A reopening in the 1980s ended quickly when the cave proved unstable. After safety works it reopened in May 2006, then closed again for years before the 2026 reopening. Some skulls still sit in small shrines left by their adopters.

For the wider picture of this neighbourhood's relationship with its dead, pair it with the catacombs and read our Naples underground history.

1. Book on the official website, cimiterodellefontanelle.it. Choose the audioguide visit (from €6) or a guided visit (from €8). The official pages quote "from" prices only.
2. Pick a 15-minute slot. Each takes 25 people at most. Groups of 20 to 50 book separately; groups over 25 are split into two, 15 minutes apart.
3. Arrive 15 minutes early. If you miss your slot you cannot enter on a later one, and the ticket is not refunded.
4. Stay up to 40 minutes. That is the limit per visitor.

Guided visits cover the cult of the anime pezzentelle and the site's legends. The official pages describe the guided visit in Italian; check the booking page for any English slots before you choose. The cemetery sold out on its opening weekend, so book a few days ahead in busy periods.

• Phones on silent, and speak quietly: it is an ossuary and a place of prayer.
• Photos and video are allowed "with good sense", without blocking other visitors.
• It is cool and damp, and the site advises suitable clothing. Bring a layer even in summer.
• Step-free: the site says it has no architectural barriers.
• No signal inside, so download the Into Rione Sanita app for the audioguide before you arrive.

Do not touch the bones or the offerings left by the faithful.

The address is Via Fontanelle 80, at the top of the valley in Rione Sanita. The nearest metro is Materdei on Line 1, about 500 m on foot. In April 2026 residents asked for the local bus to the cemetery to be restored, which tells you not to count on one; walk or take a taxi.

Make a half-day of it. Our Rione Sanita walk links the cemetery with the catacombs and the palaces of the Sanita, and the neighbourhood is known for pizza: Concettina ai Tre Santi and Starita are the names to know, and Poppella makes the fiocco di neve. The Sanita is a residential district that has changed fast in recent years; our area page is honest about it.