Fontanella’s Cemetery in Naples

The relationship of the city of Naples with death is particular. In Naples, death is the other side of life: you can’t drive away, you team up to take advantage of it. Unable to expect help from the living, the people ask the dead for it. In this perspective, the Fontanelle Cemetery is a sort of Stargate between the Earth and the world of the dead. Souls in purgatory are the link with the afterlife, those who guide and protect those who are still alive. It is not too surprising, therefore, that the popular cult of the so-called “pezzentelle (poor) souls” found fertile ground in Naples.The mystical center to maintain this relationship was, in fact, the “cemetery of the Fontanelle”, an ancient ossuary located in the Rione Sanità.

It was created in a huge tuff cavity in the seventeenth century. A disastrous century for the city: three popular uprisings, three famines, three earthquakes, five eruptions of Vesuvius and three epidemics and numerous famines. The plague of 1656 was deadly, with 250 thousand or even 300 thousand dead out of a population of 400 thousand inhabitants.

A cemetery for the victims of a catastrophic year

Due to its vastness and its isolated position, the Fontanelle Cemetery was chosen to collect and bury almost all the bodies of the victims. To these were added over the years the dead of the poorest part of the population (the “pezzentelle souls”), who could not find a place in the tombs of the churches within the city. In fact, burying the dead in city churches was a common practice and it was until the early nineteenth century, before the Edict of Saint-Cloud.

But burials in city churches presented a twofold problem. The terrible stench that came from the urban hypogea. And the availability of places, which could not have been those of a cemetery. Consequently, with the passing of the years it became more and more difficult and expensive to obtain a “grave place”.

The eternal rest in the consecrated underground became the privilege of the rich and the nobles. The first thanks to their money and the others thanks to their power were able to guarantee a good “accommodation” even when dead. Or at least they believed. In fact, the privileges that guaranteed access could not guarantee its permanence. In fact, the laws of physics do not allow to enlarge the unchangeable spaces.

A river of corpses runs through the Rione Sanità

The problem was solved with macabre practical sense, and rich earnings, by the gravediggers of the time. At night, they dug up the corpses and unloaded them in the old abandoned quarries of the Sanità district.

The puzzling discovery presented itself to witnesses in the form of terrifying horror movie scenes. Indeed, that area was subject to devastating floods. Rivers of mud and debris carried everything in their path downstream. And one of these floods caused the corpses that had been illegally deposited by the gravediggers to come out of the quarries in large numbers. Due to this tragedy, it is said that the inhabitants of the area did not leave their homes. They were terrified of being able to recognize a relative or an acquaintance in that torrent of corpses, which fell downstream.

However, after the sinister event, the corpses were reassembled in the caves, a wall and an altar were built and the place was transformed into the city’s ossuary. In practice, what was born in Naples is better known as ‘o cemetery’ and Funtanelle.

The adoption of the ‘capuzzella’

The cult of the dead in the Fontanelle Cemetery was particularly alive in the years of the Second World War and the first postwar period: years that had divided families, estranged relatives, caused deaths, misfortunes, destruction, misery. Every Monday hundreds of women dressed in black, and with a long veil, entered the ossuary in procession with a candle in hand. For the Greeks, light was a symbol of eternal life. And they placed that light in front of a skull. The one they had “adopted”, waiting to receive, during their sleep, some news of their loved one who, having left for the war, had never returned.

Adopting a skull meant choosing a skull, “na capuzzella”. The skull became a sort of dead family member but with miraculous abilities. First of all that of appearing in dreams to reveal the winning numbers to play the lotto.

The adoption of a skull required a precise ritual: the skull was cleaned and polished, placed on embroidered handkerchiefs, adorned with candles and flowers. Then the rosary was added, placed around the “neck” of the skull to form a circle. Later the handkerchief was replaced by a pillow, often decorated with embroidery and lace. The “capuzzella” (skull) was usually given a name and a history. To be able to meet him in a dream, however, it was necessary to give “refrisco”, (refreshment) that is, relief, with prayers and suffrages. In fact, the souls in purgatory, even in the certainty of paradise, are in a phase of expiation and suffer.

A lot of trust but not unlimited

In the dream apparition, graces were asked of the deceased. If these were granted, the skull was then honored with a more worthy type of burial: a box, a box, a kind of tabernacle, according to the possibilities of the adopter. The adopted soul was granted a lot of trust. The realization of a grace or the “tip” on the lottery numbers was long awaited. But if in the long run it was realized that the trust had been misplaced, the skull was abandoned and replaced with another. On the other hand, the possible choice was vast. Forty thousand human remains on the surface. And just below the foot traffic level there is an additional cavea that descends to a depth of 4 meters and according to some studies and surveys, carried out with a geo-radar, hosts over a million deaths.

The legends of the Fontanelle cemetery

There are countless legends linked to this site. One of the best known, and most curious, is that of the captain. It tells of a young Camorra man who dared to profane the sacredness of the Fontanelle Cemetery, making love with a girl. A voice, coming from a skull, reproached him for the inappropriate behavior. A heated discussion followed and the voice said he was a captain when he was alive. The young man laughed merrily even after the further curses of the sea dog. She then dismissed him by making fun of him and challenging him to show up in person. In fact, she sarcastically invited him to her wedding.

The recent history of the Fontanelle cemetery

The cemetery remained abandoned until 1872, when the parish priest of the Materdei church, Don Gaetano Barbati, with the help of local women, put the bones in order in the state they are in today. In 1969, the cardinal of Naples of the time, Corrado Ursi, worried about the signs of fetishism that the cult of “pezzentelle souls” was showing, ordered the ossuary to be closed. From that date the Fontanelle Cemetery was abandoned for many years. It was secured and tidied up after 2002. From 2006 it was again accessible to the public, but only for a few days a year, during the May of Monuments. After completing the safety measures, it was reopened for the whole year and is currently one of the most visited places in Naples.

The ticket cost is free, you need to pay only the guide ( 5 Euro) . Next time you go to visit Amalfi Coast, Sorrento or Positano, spend a couple of hours for visit out “Capuzzelle”