Napoli sotterranea, visita nel sottosuolo della città

地下ナポリは数世紀前に誕生した歴史を持ちます。一緒にその歴史をたどりましょう。

Naples underground history

In 1787 during his trip to Italy Goethe wrote about Naples: “… under the purest sky, the most insecure ground,” referring to the dynamic Vesuvius to the east and the fervent eruptive activity of the many small volcanoes in the Phlegraean Fields to the west. If the writer had descended into the Neapolitan underground, he might have spoken of the city as a true “swiss cheese,” made of tunnels and underground walkways, ancient aqueducts and immense cisterns, and many tuff quarries.

An engineer of the Municipality of Naples, Guglielmo Melisurgo, in 1889 traveled all the cavities used for the city aqueduct, and counted more than five thousand caves and two thousand wells; since that expedition, less than 50% of the Neapolitan underground has been explored, for a total of 638,000 square meters among quarries and channels, reservoirs and conduits from the Greek and Roman era.

It is not known who began to dig these cavities, although the oldest news dates back to the time of the Cimmerians, skilled miners from the Caucasus who in the 8th century BC populated the region; Pliny the Elder and many other authors of the time tell us that the Cimmerians lived not far from Naples, on the shores of Lake Avernus, in caves and underground dwellings called argillae, and lived off the earnings of their mines. The geographer Strabo instead refers to the Eumelides, a people who lived in Neapolis and who dealt with mines and tombs.

All the cavities of the underground Naples, however, date back to very ancient times and were made by man for the extraction of the “Neapolitan yellow tuff,” an excellent building stone. Although many tunnels became catacombs, pagan caves or aqueducts and the large cavities were used as rainwater cisterns and granaries.

Underground Naples from World War II to today

During the last world war Underground Naples became a vast and effective air raid shelter, equipped with toilets and electric lighting. For 3000 years and until the use of reinforced concrete, the building material for Neapolitan houses was tuff. Perhaps the Greeks who chose this area to found their ancient Neapolis were attracted precisely by the yellow rocks of Mount Echia, a small extinct volcano rising behind the current central Piazza Plebiscito; in fact, according to many archaeologists, the tuff used to build the fortress on the nearby islet of Megaride was extracted from that mountain.

As of December 31, 1897, there were 69 active quarries with almost 2000 workers dedicated to extraction, and so, while over the centuries the cubic meters of empty space increased underground, on the surface a city developed “in the positive,” with its palaces and castles. Today the most representative examples of how Neapolitan architects have used yellow tuff are the Castel dell’Ovo built on the Megaride islet, the 1329 Castel Sant’Elmo on the San Martino hill, and the seventeenth-century Palazzo di Donn’Anna on the Posillipo seashore. Naturally, there are houses and tuff palaces everywhere, and in the city, there is growing attention to the restoration of buildings made with this material.

In 1997, the director of the French Institute in Grenoble, Jean-Nöel Schifano, just after completing the restoration of the facade of his Institute, of course entirely made of tuff, organized a great party to highlight the cultural importance of this Neapolitan stone: with the “Babà-Tuff” party, the eccentric Director paired the two “main elements” of the city, tuff and babà (a famous Neapolitan dessert), in a highly effective intellectual game.

Naples was therefore built with the same stone as its underground, with a “geological continuity” perhaps unique in the world: the foundations of its buildings often rest directly on the underlying tuff bed. This practice, according to some, made the city more “elastic,” saving it from many earthquakes over the centuries, and furthermore, the terrible seismic wave would be mitigated thanks to all the cavities in its underground.

Tuff Extraction in the Underground of Naples

In recent centuries, some changes have been recorded in the internal architecture of the quarries: in the oldest ones, considered the safest, the structure is in the shape of an isosceles trapezoid while those from the nineteenth century are elliptical. This new shape made the quarry more unstable, as demonstrated by the many partial collapses of the vaults, but it allowed for greater material extraction.

Instead, the technique of tuff extraction over these three millennia has remained substantially unchanged even though advancements in metallurgy introduced new working tools. The excavation and cutting tools are the same as in the past, such as the straight-edged pickaxe used to isolate stone blocks, the iron pole and wedge indispensable for detaching the rock from the wall, and the cleaver-shaped hammer used to reduce the block into small pieces of regular shape, which have always been the only means for extraction.

In the city, 75% of the quarries were underground and the tuff bed was reached through stairs or shafts. Excavation was done through the pyroclastics for three or four meters to provide solid protection for the sides of the opening, then work began in the first chamber until the desired depth was reached; from here, various galleries branched out to reach other tuff beds, and thus through a network of tunnels and galleries, other large cavities were reached from which the material needed for building houses was extracted. If we carefully observe the smooth walls made vertical by removed tuff, we will notice some small holes dug into the rock, 20 centimeters apart and all in a single row: these are the “grappiate,” the steps that allowed the most skilled workers to work the stone up to 20 meters high, and sometimes even on an overhang. True “free-climbers” of antiquity capable of manually creating over 8 million cubic meters of void in the explored underground, whose work enabled first the Greeks and then the Romans to construct the underground aqueducts Bolla and Claudio (the latter even under pressure), a sophisticated water network that guaranteed the city’s supply until 1883, for a remarkable 2300 years.

Naples Underground: the route and advice

Participating in the excursion means taking a journey through history spanning 2400 years, from the Greek era to the modern one, 40 meters deep among tunnels and cisterns. During the excursion, in addition to admiring the remains of the ancient Greek-Roman aqueduct and the air-raid shelters from World War II, you will visit, among others, the War Museum, the Hypogeum Gardens, the “Arianna” Seismic Station. Finally, it will be possible to visit for free the remains of the ancient Greek-Roman Theater, accessible from private property.

It is recommended to wear comfortable shoes and a sweatshirt in the summer months. Narrow paths, such as the tunnels, are entirely optional.

Napoli underground hours

There are several options to visit Napoli underground but the main entrance of the official route is at Piazza San Gaetano No. 68 (near Via dei Tribunali, right in the center of Naples). The tour to visit Napoli underground lasts about 2 hours. The route is guided by authorized guides who speak multiple languages and have an in-depth knowledge of the underground of the Neapolitan city.

Tours in Italian:
10:00-11:00-12:00-13:00 – 14:00-15:00-16:00 – 17:00-18:00
(Thursday at 21:00 only by reservation reaching a minimum of 10 people)
Tours in English:
10:00-12:00-14:00-16:00-18:00
(Thursday at 21:00 only by reservation reaching a minimum of 10 people)

For groups fewer than 10 people, no reservation is necessary. Tours in other languages, groups, or tours outside opening hours only by reservation.

Hours and reservations Napoli Sotterranea entrance for schools

Schools can book guided tours also at different times than those indicated by sending an email to info@napolisotterranea.org or requesting information at the following phone numbers (+39) 081 296944 ; (+39) 081 0190933o ; (+39) 333 5849479 ; (+39) 349 1046436. By sending an email or calling the indicated numbers it is possible to agree with the people responsible for managing excursions for school groups, as well as the orientation lessons to the site which, upon the school’s request, can be held before the visit; it is also possible to agree or request information about educational workshops.

Useful numbers to contact the Association: Napoli Sotterranea ticket price

Phone: (+39) 081 296944

Napoli underground prices

Napoli underground cost: Full: € 9.30; reduced: € 8.00; students and teachers: € 6.00; for children from 5 to 10 years old; reduced with artecard; 10% discount.