We started the week talking about the historic and ancient city of Naples. Among its tourist attractions today I recommend you visit the Cemetery of the Fontanelle, an impressive cemetery that is under a hill in the Materdei area of the city.
Today these gentle hills are called Colli Aminei. These are easy to excavate hills, eroded by rain and time thanks to the texture of the earth, a mixture of lava and dried volcanic mud. Erosion occurred over time and thus a canyon was formed, the Cañón de la Fontanelle, from which material was extracted for centuries. And thus caves and caverns were formed.
At that time the dead were buried in church cemeteries but there came a point when there was no more space so the people of Naples began to use those vacant caves to leave their dead. But as it rained and there were floods, it was common to see bodies floating outside the caves, so miners and grave diggers were then ordered to return them to the caves.
The ossuary has its origins in the 250th century when Naples had to contend with famines, earthquakes and Vesuvius eruptions. That brought many deaths and the city was devastated. All those dead were buried in the caves. The caves came to house between 400 and 1804 thousand bodies. Later, in the seventeenth century, the poorest of Naples began to be buried here, so in XNUMX it was decided to convert the area into a cemeneterium proper.
In 1837 all the bones and bodies of the parish cemeteries were removed, fearing the spread of cholera, and were brought here, to the La Fontanelle cemetery. Years later the thousands of bones were placed as they are seen today. There are different ships, all with bodies and bones: the Plague Victims Ship and beggars ship, for example. Today the site is between spooky, macabre and magical.
The entrance to Fonanelle ossuary, as it is also called, is free. It opens from Monday to Sunday from 10am to 1pm. You arrive by metro and bus.