Dig These Bones: Cimitero delle Fontanelle

Follow me in this clip as I venture deep into Naples, far from the throngs of tourists piling off our cruise ship. I discovered an amazing quarry filled with human bones when I was here in the spring, and I just had to come back with my TV crew to film it. Here’s how I wrote it up for the next edition of the Rick Steves Italy guidebook: Cemetery of the Fountains (Cimitero delle Fontanelle) A thousand years ago, cut into the hills at the high end of Napoli, was a quarry. In the 16th century, churches with crowded cemeteries began moving the bones of their long dead here to make room for the newly dead. Later, it housed the bones of plague victims and the city’s paupers. In the 19th century, many churches emptied their cemeteries, adding even more skulls to this vast ossuary. Then, a cult of people appeared whose members adopted skulls. They named them, put them in little houses, brought them flowers, and asked them for favors from the next life. And today, the quirky caves — stacked with human bones and dotted with chapels — are open to the public. Located in a sketchy-feeling neighborhood at the top end of Sanità (via Fontanelle 80, tel. 081.795.6160, 10:00-17:00 daily, tips accepted). To get there, hop in a taxi, ride the subway to the Materdei stop and follow the brown signs for ten minutes, or hike ten minutes up Via Sanità from the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità).