Comune di Napoli - the holy mile - Catacomb of St. Gaudioso

...Initially built at the entrance of the cemetery of St. Gaudioso, and modernized in the seventeenth century. Altars on sides are separated by striated pillars... the tribune is flanked by two columns of green Calabria marble ... in the curve of the apse run three arched niches.

...Under the central altar and the other altars are 10 bodies of Martyrs, taken in Naples in 1616 by the dominican Fr. Timoteo Casella, bishop of Marsico and buried here during a solemn procession.

The catacomb of St. Gaudioso is on the right of altar... first of all you can see the cell of St. Gaudioso with an altar in the middle and in the bottom a large arcosolia and underneath the burial, around you'll see a large mosaic depicting the life of the Saint... above all an inscription... In front of the visitor there is a similar cell with a big arcosolia and a cross of jewels, underneath there is a burial... maybe of Saint Nostriano; under the vault there is "the head of Christ", an excellent piece of work of the fifth century; it attracts the attention of artists and archaeologists.

On the left... let's begin visiting the ambulatory surrounded by crypts... from here it's seen a modern scale that leads to some cells of seventeenth century, made in almost all the churches where there were large burial. Here we are the so-called "cantarelle", carved tufa-stone seats with pots below them; the deceased were placed on the seats and let to dry, in the pots drained internal organs, their remains (the body) were dressed and deposited; from this custom neapolitans say that "to drain" is like "to die".

Date back to the 1636 the vandalic decision to destroy many paintings cemetery, to embed in the walls of the catacombs some standing bodies; we don't know if bodies were embed immediately after death or after the procedure of the "cantarelle".
We note finally that it is false that in this catacomb was originally painted the series of the Neapolitan bishops.