Halloween in Naples 2026: Fontanelle, catacombs, underground

This year Halloween falls on a Saturday and All Saints' Day (Ognissanti) on a Sunday: no extra day off, because Monday 2 November, the Day of the Dead, is a normal working day in Italy. On the plus side, Sunday 1 is also a free museum Sunday and the day the San Gregorio Armeno nativity fair opens. Halloween reached Naples late and settled on top of something much older: a city that talks to its dead, adopts them and brings them sweets. To spend 31 October here you don't need a costume. You need a sweatshirt, because you'll be going underground, and a couple of bookings made in good time.

Below are the places where this story really shows, with opening times taken from the official sites. The 2026 events are out: you'll find them day by day further down.

Halloween events in Naples 2026, day by day

With children, 25 October at Città della Scienza makes for a full afternoon of experiments about fear, and anyone who wants more can try the science-camping night of 30-31. In the centre, between Saturday 31 and Sunday 1, there's the little-witch tour through the lanes and, at the Teatro Bellini's Factory on the fifth floor, horror readings with a shadow-puppet workshop for ages 5 and up: both need booking, places are limited.

Saturday 31 October: under the city, even after dark

The underground is the most sensible place to spend Halloween in Naples, because down there the fear isn't fake: Greek quarries, cisterns, shelters where people slept through the bombs. Napoli Sotterranea starts from Piazza San Gaetano 69, on via dei Tribunali, with tours in Italian and English every hour, 10am-6pm. You go down among the Greco-Roman aqueduct and the wartime shelters. The evening tour runs only on Thursdays at 9pm, by booking and with at least ten people: if you arrive on Thursday 29, give it a try.

On the other side of the centre is the Galleria Borbonica, the tunnel the king had dug under Chiaia: cisterns, air-raid shelters and vintage cars and motorbikes left down there since the war. This year the Halloween raft night is on: Friday 30 and Saturday 31 October, slots at 8pm and 10pm, floating across the underground cistern with a Halloween feel. It costs 20 euros, it's for ages 10 and up and booking is required: all the details on the event page. Places are limited, so don't leave it to the week before.

On Saturday 31 at 9pm, the night-time Halloween Tour of the old centre leaves from Piazza Museo 19, outside the Archaeological Museum: nearly two hours of dark legends and ghost stories, ending with a drink, 20 euros (16 for ages 15-17). With children, the Mostra d'Oltremare has Giochi di Zucca, a pumpkin patch around the lake, until 2 November. Bar parties are announced in the two weeks before; the place to gather is still Piazza Bellini, which is packed on a Saturday night anyway.

The Fontanelle and the anime pezzentelle

If one place explains why Halloween in Naples isn't an imported holiday, it's the Cimitero delle Fontanelle, at via Fontanelle 80, in the Rione Sanità neighbourhood. It's a tuff quarry of about 3,000 square metres where, for centuries, the bones of epidemic victims and of the poor with no grave ended up. This is where the cult of the anime pezzentelle, the "poor souls", was born: a family would choose a nameless skull, clean it, build it a little house of wood or marble and pray to it. In return the soul, from purgatory, was meant to send a favour, sometimes a dream with the lottery numbers.

Since 18 April 2026 the cemetery has been open again on a permanent basis, run by the La Paranza cooperative together with the city council. It's open 10am-6pm, last entry 5.15pm, closed on Wednesdays, and booking is always required, only on the website cimiterodellefontanelle.it. It's open on Saturday 31 and Sunday 1; on Mondays and Fridays there's also an hour, 9am-10am, that's free and reserved for prayer only. On Monday 2 November, the Day of the Dead, that hour shows you the cult as it still lives today.

Sunday 1 November: the catacombs of San Gennaro and San Gaudioso

A quarter of an hour's walk from the Fontanelle are the Catacombs of San Gennaro, two levels of underground basilicas with frescoes more than a thousand years old and the mosaics of the Crypt of the Bishops, and the Catacombs of San Gaudioso, beneath the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità. At San Gaudioso, in the 17th century, nobles had themselves buried with their skull set into the wall and their body painted below it: it's the closest thing to a Halloween image you'll find in a church.

One ticket covers both catacombs and the basilica. Watch the holiday opening hours: San Gennaro opens only 10am-1pm on Sundays and public holidays, San Gaudioso every day 10am-5pm. So on Sunday 1 start with San Gennaro in the morning and leave San Gaudioso for the afternoon. Sunday 1 is also a Domenica al Museo, when the Archaeological Museum, Capodimonte, Palazzo Reale and San Martino are free, and the Sanità is walking distance from the Archaeological Museum. The same day the San Gregorio Armeno nativity fair opens, a quarter of an hour's walk from the museum. Here you'll find the guided tour of the Catacombs of San Gennaro, in Italian or English.

Munaciello and bella 'mbriana: the other tenants

Every Neapolitan home, they say, has two tenants who don't pay rent. The bella 'mbriana is the good spirit, an elegant lady who protects whoever lives there: you greet her when you come in. The munaciello is more complicated. He's a little monk who moves things around, makes your keys vanish and now and then leaves a coin. Matilde Serao, in her Leggende napoletane (Neapolitan Legends), has him born of a 15th-century love affair that ended badly; the more down-to-earth explanation links him to the pozzari, the men who cleaned the cisterns and could climb into houses at night through the wells. If you go down into Napoli Sotterranea, you'll see those wells.

Legends are best told on foot. On via dei Tribunali stands the church of Purgatorio ad Arco, with bronze skulls on the facade and, underneath, the hypogeum where people venerate the skull of Lucia, wearing a bridal veil. It's one of the stops on the walk origins, cults and legends of the old centre with an archaeologist, two and a half hours from the Greek walls to the Duomo.

Monday 2 November: the dead and the torrone

On 2 November Naples goes to the cemetery at Poggioreale, among flowers and chatter. At home a sweet appears that exists only in these days: torrone dei morti, 'o murticiello. It has nothing to do with Christmas nougat. It's soft, made of chocolate with hazelnuts, and often shaped like a little coffin: the tavùto. Tradition says the dead come back on the night between the 1st and the 2nd, and the sweet is there to sweeten their journey.

From late October, pastry shop windows fill up with torroncini in dozens of flavours, from classic to pistachio, gianduia and coffee, sold whole or by the slice. Ask for the soft chocolate one with hazelnuts: that's the traditional one.

For the three days, the version that works: Saturday 31 underground by day and the old centre at night, Sunday 1 the Sanità with its catacombs and the Fontanelle, Monday 2 a torrone and a walk around town. On the map of Naples you can see how close these places are: from the Sanità to Piazza San Gaetano is barely half an hour on foot. Halloween events, as they're announced, go into things to do in Naples, with those days' dates and the experiences you can book on those days.