Behind a gate on a quiet street in the Rione Sanità, a tunnel opens into the side of a hill and keeps going. Inside are the remains of roughly 40,000 people — stacked in the dark, and tended for two centuries by Neapolitans who came here to adopt a skull, care for it, and pray for it.
The Fontanelle is not a cemetery in any sense you’d recognise. There are no graves and almost no names. After years closed to the public it reopened on 19 April 2026, and it is once again one of the strangest and most moving places in Naples.
Plan your visit
- Where — Via Fontanelle 80, 80136 Naples, in the Rione Sanità
- Metro — Materdei, Line 1, then about a 10-minute walk
- Open — Monday to Sunday, 10:00–18:00, last admission 17:15. Closed Wednesdays and Christmas Day
- Prayer area — Mondays and Fridays, 09:00–10:00
- Booking — mandatory, online, in advance
- Groups — entry every 15 minutes, maximum 25 people, 40 minutes inside
- Tickets — from around €6 accompanied, €8 guided; some guided experiences reach about €10
Book through the official Fontanelle website. Unofficial tour pages resell the same slots and cause confusion at the door — and prices and availability change, so check the official site before you go.
Booking is handled by GetYourGuide, whose widget sets its own cookies — so it only loads if you accept cookies. You can book directly instead:
Book a Naples tour on GetYourGuideA quarry that filled with the dead
The Fontanelle began as a tuff quarry cut into the Materdei hill — the same soft stone the city above it is built from. The name comes from the small springs that once ran down these slopes.
Naples was crowded; its burial space was not. Churches, crypts and underground chambers filled and overflowed, and when they were cleared out, the anonymous remains had to go somewhere. They came here. The ossuary has held human remains for at least four centuries: people too poor for a grave of their own, and — by long tradition — the dead of the plague of 1656 and the cholera outbreak of 1836.
The usual figure is 40,000. Local tradition insists on far more. Nobody has ever counted.
What that means once you’re inside: no headstones, no dates, no family names. Just bones and skulls in enormous cave-like spaces, with candles and small shrines among them.
The anime pezzentelle
This is where the Fontanelle stops being an ossuary and becomes something stranger.
In Neapolitan devotion, the anime pezzentelle — the “poor souls” — were the dead in Purgatory with nobody left to pray for them. Abandoned, forgotten, stuck. The living could shorten their wait with prayers. And in return the souls could look after the living: protection, guidance, a favour, sometimes an answer that arrived in a dream.
So people adopted a skull.
You chose one — a capuzzella — cleaned it, gave it a place, sometimes built it a small box or shrine, and brought it flowers and candles. In exchange you asked for something: a healing, a birth, work, a stroke of luck. Nobody involved thought of this as macabre. It was an exchange of care, running in both directions.
The devotion took hold at the end of the 18th century, when a priest, Don Gaetano Barbati, had the scattered bones exhumed and arranged — and it was that arrangement which made the place visitable and the cult possible. Women were central to keeping it alive: they were the ones who came, cleaned, prayed and maintained the shrines, generation after generation.
The formal practice was eventually stopped. The candles were not. You’ll still find fresh flowers here.
What the visit is actually like
Forty minutes, in a cave, in near-silence.
It’s cool inside and the ground is uneven. The temperature doesn’t care what the weather is doing outside, so bring a layer whatever the season, and wear shoes you can walk on rock in.
It isn’t a horror attraction and nothing is staged. The skulls are real and the bones are real, but the effect is less fright than a kind of quiet vertigo — the arithmetic of it, row after row, every one of them somebody.
Go with that in mind. Don’t touch the remains. Check the rules before you film — this is still a place of worship two mornings a week. Mornings and early afternoons tend to be calmest, though since entry is by timed slot, the slot you book matters more than the hour you turn up.
Make a morning of the Sanità
Forty minutes is the visit. The neighbourhood deserves longer. All within a short walk:
- Catacombs of San Gennaro
- Catacombs of San Gaudioso
- Basilica di Santa Maria della Sanità
- Palazzo dello Spagnolo and Palazzo Sanfelice
- Jago Museum
- and the food, which is reason enough on its own
The Rione Sanità cultural network connects most of these. The Fontanelle itself is run through a public-private partnership between the Municipality of Naples and Cooperativa La Paranza — the same cooperative behind years of cultural regeneration in this district, turning its heritage into work for the people who live here. That’s the other story on this street.
📖 Also in Naples: the Cloister of Santa Chiara, a hidden oasis in the historic centre.
Why it stays with you
Pompeii shows you a city that stopped. The Fontanelle shows you one that never did.
The point was never the skulls. It’s that for two hundred years ordinary Neapolitans came down into a quarry to look after the forgotten dead, and expected the dead to look after them — an arrangement conducted in candlelight, largely by women, largely unrecorded.
Naples has never treated death as the end of the relationship. The Fontanelle is where you see that most plainly.
FAQ
Is the Cimitero delle Fontanelle open?
Yes. It reopened on 19 April 2026 and is open daily except Wednesdays, 10:00–18:00, last admission 17:15.
Do I need to book in advance?
Yes — booking is mandatory and online. Small groups enter every 15 minutes.
How much does it cost?
From around €6 for accompanied visits and €8 for guided visits, with some guided experiences around €10. Check the official site before booking.
How long does the visit take?
About 40 minutes.
How do I get there?
Materdei station on Metro Line 1, then roughly a 10-minute walk.
Why are there so many skulls?
They’re the remains of people who couldn’t afford an individual burial, along with the dead of epidemics, gathered here as the city’s burial space overflowed.
What are the anime pezzentelle?
The “poor souls” in Purgatory with no one to pray for them. Neapolitans adopted and prayed for them, and asked for protection or favours in return.
What does capuzzella mean?
Skull, in Neapolitan — specifically the one a person adopted, cared for and prayed to.
Is it worth visiting?
Yes, particularly if you’re drawn to hidden places, local tradition, and the parts of Naples that don’t appear on the standard itinerary.
