Cimitero delle Fontanelle

The Fontanelle Cemetery occupies former tuff quarries in Naples's Sanità district. Rows of skulls and other human remains form an ossuary closely associated with collective memory and devotion to the anonymous dead.

Why it matters

The cemetery received remains from burial grounds and from periods of epidemic and hardship. Its history reveals how the city accommodated death beyond crowded church cemeteries, and how later devotion gave individual meaning to unidentified remains.

What to notice

Long quarry chambers are organised into distinct aisles, with bones carefully arranged along their edges. Small shrines and votive objects recall the custom of adopting a skull associated with an anima pezzentella, a neglected soul. Prayers, care and offerings expressed a hoped-for reciprocal relationship between living people and the dead.

Context and history

The plague of 1656 and later crises contributed to the accumulation of remains. From 1872 Don Gaetano Barbati helped reorganise the ossuary, assisted by local devotees. Twentieth-century ecclesiastical restrictions on the skull cult and later conservation campaigns altered the site's use, while its significance as a place of neighbourhood memory endured.