Cemetery of Poggioreale, Naples

Until the 18th century most funeral monuments were located inside churches, closer to the divine air, and where they could either buy a generation of prayer, or at least be entombed within earshot of genuflecting masses, so as to be lifted into heaven by their overhead chants.

As churches became crowded with tombs, this open air monumental cemetery allowed noble families to build private chapels and crypts in a slightly more secular location, on the southern side of the hill of Poggioreale.

At the upper end is a Neoclassic church with a Pieta by Gennaro Cali, in its tribune; and behind a large oblong square, surrounded by a portico of fluted Doric columns, out of which open 102 proprietary chapels, beneath each of which are the family vaults of the owners.

The colossal, nondenominational figure of Religion in the centre of the quadrangle is by Tito Angelini.

[1] Those who cannot afford to pay for their own graves are interred without coffins in another part of the grounds, as in the "Cemetery of the 366 Fossae"; but as the fee is small, not more than half-a-dozen bodies are deposited during the three days each pit remains open.