For those of you who aren’t local friends, or who have never been to Napoli, I wanted to tell you a little bit about our experiences living here and our impressions of the area after 3.5 years. I asked each member of our family to describe downtown Naples in three words.

Here is what we all said:

Harper – traffic, crowded, weird.

Gideon – crazy, water (Naples is situated around a bay), pizza.

Danna – chaotic, loud, colorful.

Justin – historical, stressful, gritty.

I think Justin may have been a little critical, but I guess it is true. I don’t think I’d want to make my way downtown every day just because there are a lot of people and sooo many things going on. If you go back to our very first blog post about our first trip downtown you can read about our misadventures using public transportation and how completely overwhelmed we were. We are pretty much pros at this point and I have come to appreciate so much about the Campania region of Italy and the treasures of Naples.

Napoli is the third largest city in Italy, after only Rome and Milan. The city is very hilly so many of the alleys go upward and have steep inclines and many levels of stairs. People here REALLY love their pets, but they don’t clean up after them so you have to be careful where you walk to not soil your shoes and to be sure you aren’t hit by cars or motorbikes.

On this particular trip, we journeyed with the Naples USO downtown for the Spooky Naples tour. The tour began at the British Cemetery on the outskirts of town. There our tour guide explained to us some of the customs and traditions surrounding burial in the region. The graves in this cemetery are exceptionally cared for, as you can see from the photos. There were many families tending to gardens and plots. Some of the plots were elaborate gardens and many of the tombstones were truly pieces of art.

Next, we walked through Naples to the Fontanelle Cemetery Caves, which were so fascinating! Most of the skulls found here are from unknown plague victims (1656) or victims of WWII bombings. It is believed that there are skulls from over 40,000 people in the caves. Half of the population of Naples died during the plague in 1656 and more from cholera in the 1830s. The Fontanelle cemetery used to be considered a haunted place that was avoided at all costs. Fun fact: It is said that during one particularly bad rainy season the city became so flooded and the caves so crowded with remains that skulls began to float through the streets!

The cemetery as it is today began to be organized in the late 1800s. As volunteers sorted the bones, volunteers began to pray for the dead. They were given names and before long people had begun to talk to the dead, requesting favors and leaving notes on scrolls in the bones. From this was born the ‘cult of the dead’ just before WWII and the fact that Naples was the most heavily bombed city in Italy added to hype. The Fontanelle was used as a bomb shelter during the war and as remains of victims were added, the Fontanelle cult was at its peak, with members praying to the skulls, building small houses for them, and praying to them for winning lottery numbers. The Cardinal of Naples eventually ordered the cemetery to be closed to put an end to the bizarre “bone worshipping.”

In the early 2000s the cemetery was restored with remains sorted and the structure reinforced so that it could be opened to the public. The cemetery is found in what I would definitely describe one of the less glamorous parts of town, to put it mildly. However, I will say that every person we encountered was beyond kind and there was so much to see, from the murals to the laundry adorning every single balcony. We stopped for an espresso in a café that turned out to be someone’s living room. They were so nice and the café was delicious!

From there, the group returned to the center of Naples where we stopped to admire the Spanish Palace, which I’ve been dying to see after spotting it on Instagram! After that, the group went on to a final church and cemetery but since the kids were losing it and it was past 1 p.m. we decided to skip it and go for pizza and wait for the bus. ☺ I have hopes that we will make it downtown at least one or two more times, but if this was our final trip I am happy with all we saw and did and with these photos I captured.