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Skip the line NAPLES UNDERGROUND

A fascinating journey into the underground and eras of the city of Naples. You will start from its foundation of Greek origin to modern-day Naples. - (Bk: 810501)

The existence of underground Naples is linked to the morphological and geological conformation of the Parthenopean territory, which is composed of tuffaceous rock that has very special characteristics of lightness, friability and stability.The first transformations of the morphology of the territory, which occurred by the Greeks starting in 470 B.C., began the growth of the fascinating world that is underground Naples. These transformations were dictated by water supply needs, which led to the creation of underground cisterns used to collect rainwater, and by the need to recover building material to erect the buildings of Neapolis.In the following centuries the expansion of the city led to the construction of a real aqueduct that allowed the collection and distribution of drinking water thanks to a series of cisterns connected to a dense network of tunnels. During Roman rule the existing aqueduct was expanded and improved, but with the advent of the Angevins, in 1266, the city experienced a great urban expansion to which, of course corresponded an increase in the extraction of tufa from the subsoil to construct new buildings, confirming a peculiarity of Naples: that of being generated from its own bowels, where the buildings rise immediately above the quarry that provided the building material.Crucially affecting the fate of the Neapolitan subsoil were several edicts between 1588 and 1615 that prohibited the introduction of building materials into the city in order to prevent the uncontrolled expansion of Naples. The citizens, in order to avoid penalties and meet the need for urban expansion, thought it best to extract the tuff underneath the city, taking advantage of existing wells, expanding the cisterns designed to hold drinking water and obtaining new ones. This type of mining, which was done from the top down, required special techniques in order to ensure the stability of the subsoil and avoid unwanted collapses.The last intervention on the underground dates back to World War II, when in order to provide safe havens for the population it was decided to adapt the structures of the ancient aqueduct to the needs of the citizens. A total of 369 cave shelters and 247 anti-cave shelters were set up throughout Naples. An official list of the Ministry of the Interior in 1939 listed 616 addresses leading to the aforementioned 436 shelters, some of them with more than one access. The setting up of the shelters led to a further fractionation of the ancient aqueduct.When the war ended, due to the lack of means of transportation, almost all the rubble was dumped underground, as if to bury with it, also all the memories of that sad period. Until the late 1960s there was no more talk about the underground, although many continued to use the wells as dumps.After about 20 years of excavation and reclamation, and thanks to the commitment and sacrifice of volunteers who descended into the bowels of Naples to unearth a historical artifact of such magnitude-a veritable underground museum-it is now possible to learn about a never-before-seen page in the history of Naples.