Catacombs of Saint Gaudiosus

The Catacombs of Saint Gaudiosus are underground paleo-Christian burial sites (4th–5th century AD), located in the northern area of the city of Naples (now Stella district).

During the seventeenth century, with the construction of the basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità just above the ancient church or chapel of St Gaudioso, the underground cemetery was "modernized" with profound changes in its original structure and the destruction of some of it.

After the outbreak of plague in 1656, the vast limestone caves in the valley became a huge open-air graveyard, and in the early 19th-century at the time of Joachim Murat, numerous bones from the "mummification rooms" were moved as well as later to make space for victims of other epidemics, such as cholera of 1836.

Many inhabitants of the neighborhood, however, believe that the church is dedicated to St. Vincent Ferrer, because of the popular devotion to this holy Dominican and of the beautiful wooden statue of him, placed at the left of the altar.

The Neapolitan actor Antonio De Curtis, known as Totò, was a native of the Rione Sanità and he was used to frequent its catacombs, where there is a fresco representing the victory of Death.