Within, Beneath and Outside the City. The Space of the Dead in Early Modern Naples (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries)

The presence of human remains within spaces inhabited by the living was a characteristic of settlements in Western, Christian Europe from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. This was largely due to ecclesiastical control over burials, which meant that the church participated fully in the dynamics of the construction, contention and manipulation of spaces within settlements. As regards this, the case of Naples during the early modern age is highly signifi cant, since it was always among the most populous cities of the world. With very few exceptions, at the start of the sixteenth century burials in Naples took place in ecclesiastical structures. In the following century, however, an important change took place that made the sepulchral topography in Naples unique among the great European metropolises.