Chiesa Santa Maria della Sanità & Catacomba di San Gaudioso

Lonely Planet review

Topped by a green-and-yellow tiled dome, the much-loved Basilica Santa Maria della Sanità is known also as the Chiesa di San Vincenzo, in honour of the cult of San Vincenzo Ferreri. Gracing dusty Piazza della Sanità since the 17th century, its architectural highlight is a sumptuous double stairway leading up to a raised altar. Below the altar sits the 5th-century Cappella di San Gaudioso, entrance to the catacombs below.

Burial site of San Gaudioso, a North African bishop who died in Naples in AD 452, these eerie catacombs reveal traces of mosaics and frescoes from various periods; the earliest from the 5th century, while later examples are from the 17th and 18th centuries. But it's not so much the art that strikes you, as the gruesome history that the catacombs tell.

The damp walls reveal two medieval methods of burying the dead. The first involved burying the corpse in the foetal position in the belief that you should depart this world as you enter it. The second method, and the one favoured by the 17th-century rich, was to be buried upright in a niche with one's head cemented to the wall. Once sapped of fluids, the headless body would be buried and the skull set over a fresco the dearly departed.