Talking to the dead
Ipogeo Dei Cristallini
In the 19th century, the baron di Donato discovered ancient Greek tombs twelve metres under the gardens of the palazzo he was building. The Greeks, who inhabited the city of Neapolis when it was still part of Magna Graecia, created some funerary hypogea, building tombs in the subsoil where the remains of the ancient inhabitants of the Neapolitan city rested for millennia. The Vergini area within the Sanità district was used as a necropolis since the 4th century BC.
Sophia, my delightful guide to these catacombs, explains that Ipogeo means underground (which makes perfect sense to me as this is still the current Greek word for it — hypogaeum). Yet 2300 years back the top room was visible, for it was built at street level. It was where the family gathered to perform the cult of the dead. They enjoyed banquets, eating and drinking above the graves of their departed relatives. From an opening in the wall that looks like a parcel slot, they dropped offerings to their dead. The chambers of the dead are one level below. Instead of graves, I am astounded to see stone beds, once covered with terracotta and still equipped with stone pillows: rocks painted in yellow, purple, blue and red, their coloured fringes making them perfect pillow imitations. Ι imagine eight souls enjoying banquets for eternity. That’s why the family threw the offerings. For them, it was like their beloved were sleeping forever—not that they were dead. And, of course, they believed in life after death. That’s how Christianity came to be, more or less; as the next dominant religion, it made sense for it to borrow and incorporate the best aspects of the previous one and present them as its own.
Sophia points out a rope painted on the wall, in case the dead person woke up and wanted to get out of bed! In the third room I stop ecstatic before the frightful coloured head of Medusa staring at me from the opposite wall as she looms over the stone beds and the painted pillars. The whole room is decorated with garlands of various types and architectural reliefs.
After all this, the last room—from the time of the Romans, who used to incinerate their dead and keep the urns with their ashes here—looks plain by comparison.
I come out into the light of day, thinking that death was not without beauty in ancient times; a beauty that offered solace. Alessandra Calise Martuscelli was right when she made it the purpose of her life for this place to operate as an archaeological site, despite the initial reservations of the Ministry of Culture.
From the street outside I can hear voices, scooters screaming past and the sounds of some music. Napoli, after all, is all about beauty and death.
Alkyoni Roilou