Fontanelle Cemetery (Cimitero delle Fontanelle)

This vast burial site built into a natural cave in the soft rock underneath Capodimonte Hill is home to an estimated eight million human bones and was one of the main cemeteries in Naples for centuries. The bones interred at Fontanelle were painstakingly cataloged and reorganized in the early 1870s, after flooding and mass burials had made the already disorganized paupers’ cemetery a jumbled mess. A cult devoted to the anime pezzentelle (poor souls) in the cemetery sprang up shortly after, with local families constructing small votive shrines to hold skulls said to bring them fortune, and visitors today can still see many of these decorated and venerated skulls, as well as the cemetery’s Maria Santissima del Carmine church and the cataloging work done in the 19th century. Though visitors are free to walk through the site without a guide, joining a tour that stops at Fontanelle Cemetery is beneficial to help make sense of its history and lore. Catacomb and mystery tours that include off-the-beaten-path attractions in Naples sometimes include Fontanelle Cemetery.