Piles of bones under Acquasola Park in Genoa

Many tunnels lay under Acquasola park in Genoa, filled with thousands of bones of people who died during the terrible 1657 plague.

"La Grande Peste" exhibition at Museo dei Cappuccini running until July 2^nd documents and goes back to this event - one of the most tragic but fascinating moments in the history of Genoa. Preserved by the previous plague, that of 1630 - commonly known as the Plague of Manzoni’s “Promessi Sposi” masterpiece - Genoa, 26-27 years later, was struck, decimated, and nearly destroyed by the deadly 1656-57 one.

Written memoirs of the time, policies adopted by the Republic of Genoa to contain the contagion, tragic iconographic representations with which artists of the time wanted to depict a scenario of death and suffering, medical and hygienic solutions are the driving themes of the exhibition.

Because of the terrible illness, the city of Genoa lost two-thirds of the population within just a year; in fact, ignoring an edict prohibiting mooring from ships coming from Sardinia led to disaster. Carried by mice fleas, the Plague propagated rapidly and hit everybody.

Literature from the time portrays a gloomy and terrible atmosphere where the dead count reached several thousand every day and rapidly created the problem of where to bury all those bodies.

In the end, the use of common pits was chosen as a viable solution: one of them lies in the area where the Acquasola park now stands.
There, it was left forgotten until the "rediscovery" in the late 80's of the last century when a group of speleologists from Centro Studi Sotterranei di Genova found the passage into the tunnels and discovered piles of bones in bulk, scattered on the ground without a particular criterion.

As the project of making the tunnels accessible to tourists is for the time being not an option, now a plan to bring forth medical and anthropological studies is advancing. The remains of Genoese people - dead in thousands during a limited and precise period of time - could offer valuable information to genetic and medical scholars.

For more information: www.bccgenova.it