Catacombs of San Gennaro — catacombs
Dominik Matus · CC BY-SA 4.0

Catacombs of San Gennaro

Catacombe di San Gennaro

  • 2 min read
  • 40.864° N 14.248° E

Interesting facts

  • The catacombs lie beneath the Sanità district, a valley long nicknamed the Valley of the Dead for its many burial grounds.
  • The lower level is the oldest, dating to the 3rd or 4th century, and may have begun as a pre-Christian cemetery.
  • Besides the basilica, the rock holds a baptismal font, a table thought to have held holy oils and possibly cells for monks or hermits.
  • Neapolitan bishops continued to be buried here until the 11th century.
  • From the 13th to the 18th century the galleries suffered heavy looting, and modern excavations only began in 1971.
  • About 200 oil lamps from late antiquity to the Middle Ages have been found, the oldest made in Naples in the late 3rd century.
  • Burials range from simple stacked wall niches to arched family tombs decorated with frescoes or mosaics, and children were sometimes buried in the arch walls.
  • Some graves reuse marble and stone taken from older tombs, alongside sarcophagi carved straight from the tuff.

Why it is worth it

Beneath the slope that climbs from the Sanità district to Capodimonte in northern Naples lies the largest Christian catacomb complex in southern Italy. Unlike the narrow galleries of Rome, the Catacombs of San Gennaro were cut into soft tuff on two levels with broad, high passages, and even whole churches were carved out of the rock. The nucleus was the tomb of a wealthy Roman family of the second or third century; at the end of the third century it received the body of Agrippinus, bishop of Naples and the city's first patron saint, and in the fifth century Bishop John I brought here the remains of Januarius — San Gennaro — martyred in 305. From then on the site bore his name.

Devotion made the catacombs grow: galleries were lengthened, new chambers opened and painted, and when the walls were full, graves were dug into the floor. Several of the finest images of early Christian Naples are here. Near the entrance is the oldest known portrait of San Gennaro, from the fifth century, showing the saint between a woman and a girl. In the Crypt of the Bishops, fifth-century mosaic portraits include Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage, who fled the Vandals by sea and was buried in Naples. The vestibule of the lower level keeps ceiling paintings in a Pompeian manner from the second and third centuries, four sarcophagi hewn from the tuff and a baptistery of 762. A great basilica with altar and bishop's chair cut into the rock is among the most unusual spaces in any catacomb.

In 831 the Lombard prince Sico of Benevento carried off Januarius's relics during a siege, and after the bishops' remains were moved into the city the catacombs slowly fell into neglect and plunder. Grand Tour travellers rediscovered them in the eighteenth century, and during the Second World War Neapolitans used them as an air-raid shelter. Cardinal Corrado Ursi had them restored and inaugurated a new entrance in 1969, and excavations uncovered the Crypt of the Bishops and the saint's tomb. Since 2006 young people from the Sanità neighbourhood, organised in the La Paranza cooperative, have run the site, and visitor numbers rose from about 5,000 a year to 130,000 by 2018.

Getting there

The entrance is at Via Capodimonte 13, beside the large church of the Incoronata Madre del Buon Consiglio, about 0.6 km from the Stella quarter of central Naples. Naples International Airport (NAP) is about 4.4 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Naples 21The Most Beautiful Places in Campania 29The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Beautiful Ancient Sacred Places in Italy 5The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Campania 6The Most Remarkable Catacombs in Italy 7The Most Remarkable Catacombs 10The Most Mystical Sacred Places in Italy 14The Most Remarkable Ancient Places in Italy 16The Most Beautiful Ancient Sacred Places 18The Most Mystical Places in Italy 25The Most Mystical Sacred Places 49The Most Remarkable Ancient Places 78The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Italy 83The Most Mystical Places 138The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Catacombs of San Gennaro are underground paleo-Christian burial and worship sites in Naples, Italy, carved out of tuff, a porous stone. They are situated in the northern part of the city, on the slope leading up to Capodimonte, consisting of two levels, San Gennaro Superiore, and San Gennaro Inferiore. The catacombs lie under the Rione Sanità neighborhood of Naples, sometimes called the "Valley of the Dead". The site is now easily identified by the large church of Madre del Buon Consiglio.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

40.86418, 14.24762per Wikidata