Catacombs of San Gennaro
Early Christian burial tunnels carved into volcanic rock, holding thousands of graves and centuries-old frescoes and mosaics.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples starts with a puzzle: the tunnels beneath Capodimonte hill carry his name and are covered in his frescoes, yet for most of their history his bones were somewhere else entirely. It traces the catacomb's growth from a second-century private tomb into three thousand burials over two levels, and how bishop John I brought in the relics of Gennaro, a bishop from Benevento beheaded around the year 305, to draw pilgrims. You'll hear how Lombard raiders under Prince Sico carried his bones away in 831, and how long it took Naples to get them back. Stand in the Crypt of the Bishops and look up at the fifth-century mosaics laid for a church that had, once, misplaced its own saint.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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