Comune di Napoli - the holy mile- Catacombs of St. Gennaro

Around the origin of our Catacombs much has been discussed, they were simple burial and never were quarries or underground ways; the first note of the monument is repeated since the death of St. Agrippino our bishop in the II century, when his body was buried there in a noble tomb. Many miracles the saint operated by the tomb, so it became a place of reverence and neapolitan wished to be buried in that place.

This desire grew on the principle of the IV century, when the bishop Saint Zosimo moved from the Agro Marciano, near Agnano, the body of the martyr St. Gennaro, who was buried there as well...
The two graves became places of supreme reverence, so with the growth of the number of faithful was necessary to expand the graveyard more and more until the entire flap of the Capodimonte hill called "Colli Aminei".

In the VIII century Sicone, Duke of Benevento, stole the relics of St. Gennaro and then Giovanni IV, the saint bishop of Naples, fearing that the relics of many saints remain unsafe outside the walls of the city, moved all in the "intramurani" (posed inside the walls) temples and, since then, the Catacombs succumbed to ruin and abandonment to this day...

The catacomb of St. Gennaro or Januarius at Capodimonte is composed of two, non overlapping levels to which the toponyms "upper catacomb" and "lower catacomb" have been attributed. The original nucleus should be identified in the utilization and expansion that took place, between the end of the second and the beginning of the third century, of a room called the "lower vestibule". From this, in periods subsequent to the third century, the ambulacra of the lower catacomb developed following a horizontal and not a vertical pattern of excavation.

The upper catacomb had various stages of development and it also originated from an ancient tomb which we call today the "upper vestibule" known essentially for late second century frescoes of the vault with exclusively Christian themes.
The topographic elements that characterize the upper catacomb the most are the small "basilica of the bishops" and the majestic "basilica maior". The former, which is located exactly above the sepulchral hypogeum that housed the relics of St.
Gennaro, is dedicated to the memory of the first fourteen Neapolitan bishops. At the end of the fifth century, an extensive transformation of the nearby areas gave rise to the great "basilica adiecta" which has three naves and preserves many frescoes that can be dated from the fourth to the sixth centuries.