The scent of lavender, usually a symbol of remembrance and solace, now hangs heavy with resignation at Naples’ monumental Poggioreale Cemetery. A woman carefully weaves a small bouquet of purple flowers into an orange construction net, a stark barrier separating her from her mother’s tomb. “You can’t go in, that’s why I have to leave it here,” she says, her voice laced with a weary sadness, peering through the mesh at the chapel of the San Pietro dei Gattoli Confraternity. “It’s lavender,” she explains, “I bring it because it resists the cold. My mother is inside, but it’s been more than five years since I could get close to her grave.”
A Cemetery in Disarray: Five Years of Inaccessibility
The chapel, entirely fenced off, stands as a testament to chronic neglect. On its rear side, desperate tubular supports attempt to shore up a wall split in two by a gaping fissure. The confraternity’s chapel was closed in March 2021 after a technical inspection confirmed “structural problems,” rendering over a thousand burial niches inaccessible. This sorry state of affairs is far from an isolated incident within Poggioreale’s monumental grounds. The same suffering echoes with every step taken among the gravestones of a cemetery where the deceased find no peace.
According to the official website of the Municipality of Naples, 15 chapels are “momentarily inaccessible following collapses that occurred on 05/01/2022 and 17/10/2022.” However, at least two inconsistencies emerge from this statement: the word “momentarily,” which has stretched into five years, and the fact that the San Pietro dei Gattoli Confraternity chapel was interdicted even before the 2022 collapses. Restoring these structures is a complex undertaking, further complicated by the continuous blame game between the curia and the municipal authority.
The “Quadrato” and the Illustrious Forgotten
As a light drizzle begins to fall, the pervasive neglect of the cemetery intensifies. Walking through overgrown grass, one reaches the “Quadrato.” Much of this area is occupied by a “temporary structure” housing the remains recovered from the 2022 collapses. Behind the purple drapes, wooden crates with numbers scrawled in marker are stacked on iron shelves. Access is supposedly denied, yet someone has found it convenient to park a scooter beneath the comfortable tent, which is anything but temporary.
From here, the path descends towards the “quadrato degli uomini illustri” (square of illustrious men), home to 157 funerary monuments dedicated to world-renowned writers, jurists, politicians, scientists, poets, philosophers, and sculptors. One tomb has completely collapsed, with bones emerging from the piled stones, left exposed to the rain. Avoiding slippery paths made viscous by vegetation, refuse, and mud, one should be able to enter the area of the most significant funerary monuments. Unfortunately, a sign on yet another orange net declares, “Access forbidden to unauthorized personnel.”
Despite the prohibition, the journey continues. Dodging stones and rubble, one passes a chapel with a broken-down door. Inside, amidst the grey dust and black grime, the vibrant colors of a painting still shine, almost making the orange netting disappear. One can reach the funerary monument of Ferdinando Palasciano, whose statue gazes towards his home in Capodimonte, where his wife, Olga Wawilow, would look out every morning to feel his presence. Today, however, the Russian noblewoman would only see an amorphous mass of climbing plants and thorns. The statue, if it could free itself from the undergrowth, would face the devastating spectacle of the Chapel of the Resurrection, still gutted after its collapse on October 18, 2022.
A Ghost Cemetery and Unfulfilled Promises
A little further on lies the ghost cemetery of Fondo Zevola, 3,000 burial plots built and then forgotten. These were meant to be part of the “Park of Memory,” a colossal 90-million-euro project that also included a “service building,” of which today only an abandoned concrete skeleton remains. Near the exit, a man with energetic and decisive gestures directs motorists to park in a small clearing a few meters from the San Pietro dei Gattoli Confraternity chapel.
The woman who earlier placed lavender on the orange net is getting into her car. The man stops her: “Ma’am, at your pleasure.” The woman’s gaze freezes him. “I can’t even get to my mother’s grave, and I should pay you too?” she says. “I already pay the bills, the taxes, and everything here is disgusting. Enough.” Then, she calms down, hands the unauthorized parking attendant a sprig of lavender, and gets into her car.
The Poggioreale Cemetery, a place meant for eternal rest and remembrance, has become a symbol of profound neglect and administrative inertia. The stories of families like the one with the lavender, of illustrious figures whose tombs lie in ruins, and of ambitious projects left unfinished, paint a grim picture. Until concrete action is taken, the cemetery will remain a poignant reflection of a city struggling to honor its past and care for its present.
Source: https://napoli.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/26_aprile_04/cimitero-di-poggioreale-la-vergogna-senza-tempo-da-5-anni-cappelle-inaccessibili-per-crolli-e-chiusure-bb010a0f-0d3b-42a1-b917-2a770e0d8xlk.shtml
