Underground and skulls

Showers today dictated indoors. Firstly we arrived at San Lorenzo Maggiore which featured a museum while we awaited guided tour of the underground roman market built over an earlier Greek building. It was buried by a mudslide caused by rain and a Vesuvius eruption in 479AD. We definitely dodged some of the showers and enjoyed a very interesting tour.
After coffee on the Via Duomo we visited the cathedral, dedicated to SAN Genaro where they are busy preparing for the procession celebrating the liquidisation of the saint’s preserved blood tomorrow. On the way back we found the ‘purgatory ‘ church, built by a benefactor to provide somewhere for poor souls who could not afford a proper burial to wait for admission to heaven. Up top was a normal church, below on similar footprint, a church with some niches containing skulls and a closed pit for bones of the deceased. At the back behind the altar, more skulls and bones, another pit and some earth burials. One might have expected to feel a bit spooky but musty was more like it.
Janet acquired her Neapolitan earrings on the way back to base for lunch.
A quiet afternoon we visited two very local churches, both large, one extremely finely decorated baroque, the other plain, Franciscan and with a wedding going on. There was some artisan chocolate for tasting on a stall at the gate- good too!Read more