Napoli Sotterranea is a journey back in history, in time before space. Visiting Napoli Sotterranea is a must: in an excursion of only two hours, you’ll pass all the history of the territory under your feet, from the bottom, up to climb up. You will discover that Naples is a city built vertically. Discovering its secrets, exploring its bowels means loving it both inside and outside, above and below; Virgil himself, perhaps, is what he referred to when he said “see Naples, and then die”.
When you enter the magic of this place, the stairs, which lead you from the entrance to the ground up to 40 meters deep, become a symbol of transition. They accompany the visitor in the passage from the Naples of today to the Naples of yesterday. Napoli Sotterranea is the other silent and hidden face of Naples, which is the history and foundation of the city (a third of the city, rests on the “void”).
The development of the underground began when the Greeks, to build the walls of Neapolis, extracted tuff from the subsoil by opening several passages and tunnels, in Roman times, the network of tunnels was expanded as they wanted to provide the city with a network of aqueducts fed by pipelines that drew water directly from the sources of Serino. The Greek-Roman aqueduct can be visited from the main access to the Neapolitan underground which is located in Piazza San Gaetano, very close to Via dei Tribunali.
From there, the guided tour takes visitors on a 2400-year journey back in time. Moving through the narrow tunnels just enough to leave the passage of a single man, you get to the large tanks that until 1885 fed the fountains of Neapolitan homes.
The 2,000,000 m² of the aqueduct was abandoned as a result of the great plague, but tuff was still being extracted for new buildings. Basically, life in Naples Underground has never stopped, during the Second World War, in fact, was used by the Neapolitans as a refuge from bombing. Still, it was used as a landfill to return to the quarries the tuff of buildings destroyed by the World War II. Remains of furniture, various objects and graffiti still bear witness to how the days were spent inside the underground city.
INFORMATION
Accessed by:
Piazza San Gaetano (Authorized Official Route)
Visiting hours:
Every day from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with guided tours every hour
.
Ticket cost :
Full price 9,00 € – Students and Teachers 8,00 € – Children from 6 to 10 years 6,00 €
Free entrance for children aged 5 years and under.
