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| ©Nigel Summerley |
The worst job you ever had is probably nowhere near as bad as that of those who once laboured in the Neapolitan catacombs of San Gaudioso in the 17th century.
God knows how, but the monks who ran the place came up with a novel way of preserving the well-off dead for posterity – and making some extra money in the process.
Down beneath the church of the Basilica Santa Maria della Sanita in Naples, I was shown the stone benches where the corpses of the rich used to be sat against the wall and then (with buckets placed beneath them) punctured to drain off all their fluids.
This process took a while apparently, so the body drainers, the schiattamuorti, sometimes had quite a few customers sitting in a row, waiting to be fully desiccated.
It must have been like working in some sort of a cross between a care home and Hell.
There was no fresh air coming into the catacombs – apart from when trap doors above were opened to lower a new corpse into place. The lack of ventilation combined with the noxious effects of exposure to decomposing bodies meant the lives of the schiattamuorti were constantly at risk.
When one of the dead was thoroughly dried out, the body was buried, but what remained of its precious head was stuck in the walls of the catacombs; and then a bizarre portrait of a skeleton wearing the clothes of the deceased was painted beneath it.
This ritual continued for several decades before someone noted how unhygienic – not to mention slightly unhinged – it was and the practice was brought to an end.
All the bones were eventually removed from the catacombs along with the front halves of the skulls on display. As you'll see from these pictures, the remains of the skulls – and the accompanying frescoes – are still very much visitable and visible.
The Catacombs of San Gaudioso present a weirdly wonderful cocktail of life, death and superstition... just like Naples itself.
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| ©Nigel Summerley |
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| ©Nigel Summerley |
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