Burial services at the Poggioreale cemetery in Naples remain affected by the aftermath of the chapels that collapsed in 2022. According to Il Mattino, recovered remains were still awaiting transfer at the time of reporting, while families visiting for the remembrance days also faced sharply higher flower prices.
The problem concerns the remains recovered from the rubble of the collapsed chapels. After the collapse of two chapels in 2022, about 1,800 bodies were reassembled in a temporary tent structure, according to the municipal councillor cited by the newspaper. Of those, 1,500 had been identified and 300 remained unidentified.
Of the 1,500 identified remains, 256 had been claimed by families at the time of the article. The article does not provide a later update, and the validated research notes that the original report is paywalled, so more recent figures could not be independently checked.
Transfers completed and transfers planned
The transfer of 210 coffins to the Grande Ipogeo had been completed at the time of reporting. For the remaining coffins, the plan described in the article pointed to transfers to the Arciconfraternita di Ponticelli and to some niches at Poggioreale.
The municipality had also outlined safety work and recovery of remains still under chapels declared unsafe, with an estimated duration of 10-12 months and an indicated cost of 1.2 million euros. The current status of those chapels and whether the planned technical recovery was carried out has not been verified in the available sources.
For context, technical operations to recover suspended coffins and mortal remains affected by the partial collapse of the Resurrezione 1 chapel began in October 2022. The municipality announced the start of operations on 27 October 2022, following the collapse on 17 October 2022.
Higher flower prices for remembrance visits
Visitors were also reporting higher flower prices. The article attributes the increases in part to supply-chain difficulties and a hauliers' stoppage. For chrysanthemums, it reports a rise at origin of more than 33% compared with the same period in the previous year.
That price figure comes from a single press source and has not been compared with official market statistics, so it should be read as a reported increase rather than a market-wide measure.
What remains unclear
Several points remain unresolved in the verified evidence. It is not confirmed whether all planned transfers to Ponticelli and Poggioreale were completed after the article was published. The present condition of the chapels declared unsafe is also not confirmed, nor is the outcome of the proposed recovery project.
Readers following this story should therefore treat the numbers above as the last verified reporting point: 1,800 remains reassembled, 1,500 identified, 300 unidentified, 256 claimed, and 210 coffins transferred to the Grande Ipogeo, with further transfers indicated but not verified as completed.
