Poggioreale, the cemetery turned into a "ghost town": residents forced to work as street cleaners

Naples - Amidst avenues overgrown with tall grass, piles of brush, and crumbling chapels, the Poggioreale Cemetery is once again at the center of citizen protests. A condition described as "unsustainable," it has dragged on for years without structural solutions and is now taking on the aspect of a genuine civic scandal.

The new reports, accompanied by images and videos shot by visitors, reached Francesco Emilio Borrelli, a member of the Green-Left Alliance, who has long been involved in campaigns for urban decorum. The picture he describes is of a sacred place reduced to ruins, a "ghost cemetery" where neglect, decay, and administrative solitude reign.

Impassable avenues and citizens forced to clean by hand

Anyone who enters Poggioreale to bring flowers to their loved ones is faced with a desolate scene. The testimonies collected speak of:
Avenues and common areas choked with weeds, brushwood and rubbish;
Chapels in danger of collapsing, with peeling walls and rubble on the ground;
Visitors are forced to clean up the paths themselves, gathering debris into piles and waiting — often in vain — for someone to come and remove it;
Virtually no maintenance is done, which amplifies the sense of abandonment and offense towards the deceased.

The images released show people armed with makeshift brooms and rakes, busy clearing paths to reach family graves. A scene that, according to many of those reporting, "humiliates the memory of the dead and the dignity of the living."

Borrelli: "The dead aren't just those buried, but also those who should be governing."

Faced with yet another complaint, Borrelli expressed a very harsh condemnation:
These scenes are unworthy of a civilized society. Citizens cannot turn into gardeners to ensure the dignity of their loved ones. The dead should only be those buried, not, metaphorically, those who administer them. Poggioreale is a mirror of our civilization.

The MP recalls how the cemetery has already been affected by serious structural problems: from the 2022 collapses, linked to subway construction, which led to the seizure of the Monumental Cemetery and the drama faced by family members waiting for the remains to be recovered, to the 2024 closures due to water infiltration and health risks.

A succession of emergencies that, for Borrelli, demonstrates "the lack of an adequate and long-lasting maintenance plan."

"We need an extraordinary plan: Poggioreale is in a state of war."

"It is urgent," Borrelli urges, "to implement a plan for both routine and extraordinary maintenance to put an end to this devastation and restore Poggioreale to the sacredness it deserves. A society that cannot offer dignity to its deceased, what can it offer to the living?"

Meanwhile, amidst overgrown avenues and crumbling chapels, residents continue to do what should be the responsibility of the institutions. Amidst the general silence, Poggioreale remains a place suspended between memory and abandonment, a testament to a civic wound that seems unhealed.