Fontanelle Cemetery (Cimitero delle Fontanelle) Tours and Tickets

Skip the predictable itinerary of a group tour and explore Naples far from the tourist track with this completely customizable private tour. Create an itinerary that matches your interests and pace together with your local guide and set off to discover the city’s authentic Rione Sanità or Pignasecca districts, the Purgatorio ad Arco and Fontanelle cemetery, the lively Via Toledo, or other fascinating sights, chosen especially for you.

The tour will begin from the Fontanelle Cemetery, built in an ancient tuff quarry and in which, still today it is possible to learn more about the relationship between Neapolitan people and death. In this place sacred and profane coexsist, creating the cult of the” pezzentelle” souls of Purgatory. It contains over 40,000 remains of people, mostly skulls, victims of the plague and cholera epidemics of the mid-seventeenth century. At the end of 19th century it became a cult place; some believers decided to rearrange the thousands of anonymous bones, adopting a skull of an abandoned soul in return for protection. The guided visit will continue in the Rione Sanità where you will have the opportunity to admire two masterpieces of the Neapolitan Baroque: Palazzo San Felice and Palazzo dello Spagnolo. Before ending our tour at Porta San Gennaro, we will taste the famous sweet “fiocco di neve” in one of the most important pastry shops in Naples.

Our journey will start from the Metro Materdei stop,one of the so-called "MetroArte" stations. We will start from the Cemetery of the Fontanelle. The large amount of human remains and skulls will leave you surprised: this place was born as mass grave and was then one of the places where the worship of the souls of Purgatory . We will continue towards the Basilica of Santa Maria alla Sanità: the pulpit with its double ramp on one side surrounds the crypt and on the other leads to the upper presbytery: it is truly a unicum in European architecture. We'll move to its most famous mansions: Sanfelice Palace and Spagnuolo Palace, jewels of late Baroque architecture, and I will show you the birthing house of an illustrious Neapolitan citizen, namely Prince Antonio de Curtis... Aka Toto! Crossing the Borgo Vergini, where you can meet a typical Neapolitan market, we will conclude our tour in Porta San Gennaro: it is one of the oldest accesses of the city, dedicated to its most famous Patron.