Necropoli di via Celle

Fourteen Roman funerary buildings line the east side of Via Celle, along the ancient road from Puteoli toward Capua. Their columbaria held the urns of families and burial associations; centuries later, the vaulted chambers were used as animal shelters, giving the street its name.

Why it matters

Romans buried their dead outside the city walls, beside the roads leading away from town. This group preserves that roadside landscape near the edge of modern Pozzuoli. The park dates its earliest monuments to the first century BC, with additional buildings extending along the street into the second century AD. The tombs also show changing burial customs, from cremation columbaria to inhumation.

What to notice

Among the row, building 6 has a brick façade articulated by pilasters, with traces of painted plaster and simple vegetal and geometric motifs around some niches. Building 11 is a mausoleum on a square brick base, with an underground chamber, a forecourt and an upper drum retaining traces of stucco. Beside it, a structure interpreted as a burial association's meeting place has a courtyard and a mausoleum faced in large piperno blocks, with marble decoration and a black-and-white mosaic floor.

Context and history

The necropolis stood at the beginning of the road from Puteoli toward Capua, where a branch toward Naples diverged. Excavations began in the 1930s; the complex was cleared of later deposits during the 1960s. In the eighteenth century and later, herders used its barrel-vaulted chambers as animal shelters. Grave goods had largely disappeared, but the buildings and their adaptations preserve a record of funerary practice across centuries.