In Naples, where history is told through layers of earth, an ancient tomb offers a window to the distant past…
Deep beneath the streets of northern Naples, on the slopes leading up to Capodimonte, in the area officially known as Rione Sanità, but also sometimes called the ‘Valley of the Dead’, lie le Catacombe di San Gennaro, where the remains of the 5th-century martyr St Januarius (Gennaro) were once entombed, as were the remains of several subsequent paleo-Christian bishops. It became a place of worship, and then a place of looting. During the Second World War, it became a place of refuge. It is now an eerie, and slightly macabre, tourist attraction.
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