Description
Napoli Sotterranea (Underground Naples) is the network of tunnels, galleries, cisterns and aqueducts dug into the tuff beneath the city, partly still open to visit. A very well-known entrance for guided tours is in Piazza San Gaetano, in the historic center of Naples.
Beneath Naples about 900,000 square meters of cavities are known, only two of them natural. Every building made of tuff has its void: the hole the stone came out of, often right under the building.
From Piazza San Gaetano you descend to the Greek-Roman aqueduct: tunnels barely as wide as a man, with traces of the waterproof plaster on the walls. The route connects to the excavations of San Lorenzo Maggiore, a few steps away.
Other places to visit are the Bourbon Gallery, entered from via Domenico Morelli, air-raid shelters like the one at Sant'Anna di Palazzo, in Chiaia, the Crypta Neapolitana and the Grotta di Seiano.
The Greeks began digging the quarries to obtain the tuff blocks for walls and temples. Then came the Romans: in the Augustan age they brought water from the springs of the Serino, 70 kilometers away, and opened the tunnels of Cocceius and Seianus.
Wells and cisterns served the city until the cholera of 1885. During World War II the quarries became air-raid shelters: graffiti and objects left by those who went down at the sound of the sirens are still there.
From the underground also comes a legend, that of the munaciello, the little spirit of the alleys. Perhaps they were the pozzari, the well keepers, who popped up in houses to steal or to flirt with the lady of the house.
Yellow tuff is ash erupted from the Phlegraean Fields about 15,000 years ago: easy to work with simple tools, yet solid enough to hold up tunnels without supports. That is why people dug for centuries directly under their houses.
Other entrances lead to the Lapis Museum, to Santa Maria Maggiore alla Pietrasanta, to the Renaissance aqueduct of Palazzo Serra di Cassano, to the Hellenistic hypogea between Sanità, Vergini and Foria, and to the Museo del Sottosuolo in Piazza Cavour.
The mapping is not finished: speleologists continually inspect tunnels that resurface after collapses and sinkholes, and discover new ones.
Beneath Naples about 900,000 square meters of cavities are known, only two of them natural. Every building made of tuff has its void: the hole the stone came out of, often right under the building.
From Piazza San Gaetano you descend to the Greek-Roman aqueduct: tunnels barely as wide as a man, with traces of the waterproof plaster on the walls. The route connects to the excavations of San Lorenzo Maggiore, a few steps away.
Other places to visit are the Bourbon Gallery, entered from via Domenico Morelli, air-raid shelters like the one at Sant'Anna di Palazzo, in Chiaia, the Crypta Neapolitana and the Grotta di Seiano.
The Greeks began digging the quarries to obtain the tuff blocks for walls and temples. Then came the Romans: in the Augustan age they brought water from the springs of the Serino, 70 kilometers away, and opened the tunnels of Cocceius and Seianus.
Wells and cisterns served the city until the cholera of 1885. During World War II the quarries became air-raid shelters: graffiti and objects left by those who went down at the sound of the sirens are still there.
From the underground also comes a legend, that of the munaciello, the little spirit of the alleys. Perhaps they were the pozzari, the well keepers, who popped up in houses to steal or to flirt with the lady of the house.
Yellow tuff is ash erupted from the Phlegraean Fields about 15,000 years ago: easy to work with simple tools, yet solid enough to hold up tunnels without supports. That is why people dug for centuries directly under their houses.
Other entrances lead to the Lapis Museum, to Santa Maria Maggiore alla Pietrasanta, to the Renaissance aqueduct of Palazzo Serra di Cassano, to the Hellenistic hypogea between Sanità, Vergini and Foria, and to the Museo del Sottosuolo in Piazza Cavour.
The mapping is not finished: speleologists continually inspect tunnels that resurface after collapses and sinkholes, and discover new ones.