Napoli Sotterranea

A forty feet deep beneath the shouting and characteristic streets of the historical center of Naples, we found an abandoned parallel world, isolated in his millennial quiet yet closely connected with the city.


Everyone is used to appreciate the exceptional beauty of Naples, and its culture and art, but few know the story of its underground, born with the city and grown with it. Today “Napoli Sotterranea” is a complex of underground tunnels and other environments dug into the tuff, forming part of the ancient aqueduct that remained in use until the late nineteenth century and which was used in part as a bomb shelter in 1940/43.


But let’s take a closer look to its history… we know that the first artefacts of  the underground excavations dates back to about 5000 years ago, almost to the end of the prehistoric era. Years later, Greeks withdrew the tuff in large quantities, using it to fortify the city and to create temples and different underground burial, striking example is the Greek quarry that the caver Enzo Albertini, after years of underground research, brought to light, at about 40 meters deep below the cemetery of S. Maria del Pianto. From the quarry, the Greeks withdrew all the tuffaceous material needed to build the Neapolis of the fourth century BC, leaving graffiti and monograms on the walls.
So did the Romans, who during the Augustan period, built an aqueduct with an impressive network of tunnels and roads, visible today in the caves of Cocceio and Seiano.


In the seventeenth century, a new aqueduct was built to cope with the population growth of the city; the old one and countless rain tanks were not able to quench the thirst. For this reason in 1629 a wealthy Neapolitan nobleman, Carmignano, built the new aqueduct, ceasing to dig the underground in early 1900, thus abandoning a network of tunnels and cisterns of over 2 million square meters that spanned the length and breadth of the city.


The outbreak of the Second World War gave back importance to the underground network almost forgotten in fact people started using Naples subsoil galleries as bomb shelters. The cavities were lit and arranged to accommodate dozens of people who hurried down in the subsoil to the sound of the alarm siren. Today we can still see remains of the furniture, various items and graffiti as proof of the great fear lived in that period. We also know about histories of war’s survivors who really lived in those cavities such as the story of Carmela Montagna who gave birth to her child in the staircase of the entrance to the subsoil of Via Sant’Anna di Palazzo.


Currently, some of these cavities are no longer reachable because clogged with debris illegally downloaded from wells that connected streets and buildings to the ground.
There are different paths to access the network of underground rooms even if the two main entrances to the site are in Piazza San Gaetano and in Via Sant'Anna di Palazzo; the visit of Naples underground lasting about an hour will allow you to discover the real parallel Naples up to 40 m deep.