Cimitero delle Fontanelle
A tuff cave beneath the Sanità district of Naples holding the bones of thousands of anonymous dead, and the home of a devotion the Church banned in 1969 and never managed to end: adopting a skull, cleaning it, learning its name in a dream, and praying for it in exchange for favours. Shut since 2019, the cemetery reopened in April 2026.
Field Guide Entry
Where the bones came from
Naples ran out of room for its dead early. From the sixteenth century undertakers began moving skeletal remains out of overfilled churches and into a tuff quarry cave above the Sanità district. The plague of 1656 filled it further, and the cholera epidemic of the 1830s filled it again. For two centuries the result was a chaos of anonymous bone. In 1872 a priest named Gaetano Barbati had the remains catalogued and arranged, stacked on wooden racks and set into makeshift crypts, and that arrangement is broadly what a visitor walks through today. Estimates of how many people lie there circulate freely and rest on nothing anyone has published.
The adoption
What grew in the cave was the cult of the anime pezzentelle, the poor souls. A devotee chooses an anonymous skull, a capuzzella, cleans it, and waits for its name to arrive in a dream. From that point the relationship runs both ways: prayers for the soul's release from Purgatory, and in return, requests. A skull that delivers gets paid, in candles, flowers, coins, embroidered cloths and small built shrines. Several acquired reputations and names that outlived the devotees who kept them. The same devotion is practised at the church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco and at Santa Luciella in the old centre, which makes the Fontanelle the largest site of the practice and not the only one.
The ban, and what happened after
In 1969 Cardinal Corrado Ursi judged that the devotion had degenerated into fetishism and closed the cemetery to the public. The cult did not stop. Offerings kept appearing, and still appear, at the Fontanelle and at the smaller sites in the centre. The cave itself has spent much of the last half century shut, including a closure that began in 2019, and it reopened on 18 April 2026 after restoration and safety work carried out under an arrangement between the city and the Cooperativa La Paranza, the social enterprise behind the revival of the Sanità's other underground sites.
Visiting Information
Reopened on 18 April 2026 after restoration. Open daily from 10:00 to 18:00, closed Wednesdays and on 25 December. Entry is timed and capacity is capped, so book online for a specific fifteen-minute slot; walk-up entry is not guaranteed. Residents of Naples' first and second municipalities enter free with a reservation, and the ticket carries a discount at other cultural sites in the neighbourhood.
The cave stays cool and damp year-round and the floor is uneven, so bring a layer and sensible shoes. The Sanità is a dense working district reached by a steep climb from the centre, and it repays the time. The offerings left at individual skulls are live devotional objects, not display pieces, so photograph the space, leave everything where it sits, and give anyone praying room.
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