Naples: the city of pizza, sfogliatelle, babba, moka espresso and I may list many more words.
However Naples has got also a very long history being founded in the middle age by the Greeks and having seen lot of difference influences given by the different populations which lived here.
Due to that we can find many trace of this long history everywhere in the city, and when I say everywhere I mean literally everywhere, even in the underground!
If you ever been to Naples you should not miss a visit in the charming Naples Underground. What’s Naples Undergroud? Well it is another city just below the original city. Below the city center streets and buildings there are tons of small paths and caves which are part of the heart of Naples, when the city has born by the Greeks ages.
The complete site can be visited by accessing the underground in Piazza San Gaetano in the actual city center, with 136 steps you will reach 40 meters of depth below the city ground.
The path goes down into the ancient Tufo Caves. The first caves were created to dig the famount tufo, a very useful construction material used to build ancient walls and temples, nowadays still many old houses are built with this material which has got many positive aspects in constructions. Greeks were escaving all those stones to give luxury to their Neapolis constructions.
The city of Naples is surrounding over a big volcano area, the Vesuvio, sleeping but still active volcano which gives the underground very unique mix of natural materials, reason why also Greeks were searching for tufo caves, those yellow stones.
The underground city took a lift only in the Greek-Romans ages when Romans embraced the caves and dig a full interconnected streets system to connect the complete city which was evolving outside the ground, moreover they started to create a very big a complex Aqueduct. If we think at the construction capabilities of those ages we can just admire what Greeks and Romans have done to build such an imponent underground city.
The aqueduct was serving all fountains of the city and privately the most rich Romans private houses with direct access from the underground. This gives an idea of how much complex this underground system is. Even still nowadays you can see traces on the walls of special “intonaco” Romans used to impermeabilize walls due to the containing water, those traces are very nice shapes of different colors given by the contact of the impermeabilization materials with the water inside.
The system was not only having the complexity of serving water but also for the aqueduct maintenance. For this specific task small exit tunnels with ground level holes were built connecting the outside “world” with the tunnelling system, so that designed people could go up and down in order to maintain the aqueduct. Those exit tunnels were built so small so that the people using them could climb with just their hands and feets holding on the surrounding walls, that’s why designed small people were selected, they were called pozzari.
A fun note is that those maintenance tunnels have been used also for robbery activities by thefts or to have unfaithful relations with women left alone in the houses. Why fun? Well because of the legend behind this. Thefts and lovers could basically enter many houses, especially rich ones due to private water access, and simply by just walk in the underground water tunnels without being seen by anyone. This created a very famous legend in the Neapolitan local culture: O’ munaciell. In dialect this word means a small monk, in favour of the pozzari figure, the legend says that this small monk will bring fortune or bad luck based on the fact if he would bring money (coins) or hiding / taking / breaking objects, depending on your finding in house at the wake up, so of course during the night!
When the aqueduct went in dis-use this beautiful underground system has been used as rubbish dump, people were throwing rubbish in the ground maintenance holes and filling the below caves of rubbish, very sad use of such an ancient treasure.
However the tunnels have become to live again during World War II because of the German bombs. The complete system was used as refuge to the bombing which was affecting the city. Population of Naples first of all attempted to clean the caves as they were full of rubbish but, being too much, they built a complete new floor on top of the complete rubbish due to the emergency they were taking into. It is estimated the underground “rubbish” floor is 5 meters high, in fact the old aqueduct water sign on the current walls is very low since the actual walking floor is rebuilt higher than the original one.
Population even built an electricity system and toilet area’s, re-established walls to make sure air was much more clean to breath as they lived a very long time far from sun light because of the World War II destruction. All the “open” maintenance holes were also closed to avoid that bombs could follow inside them, only the ones going out inside churches were left open for the air circulations thinking that the churches might protect them … thing which unfortunately didn’t happen.
Some parts of this unbelievable underground system are very tiny with a max width of 50 centimeters, all dark to preserve the original constructions, and this is the more fascinated area to visit, with candles in the hands to illuminate the path while walking side way to fit in the narrow tunnels.
The underground system connects also a very big Roman Theater which however is not all discovered since it is just undernight a complex system of city center houses called bassi. In dialect the words means low houses, at the level of the street.
This can be seen by accessing the only digged area of the Roman Theatre thanks to an old woman who sold her “basso” (house) to a local non-profit art organization which performed excavation in its cantine. In fact the entrance to visit this part of the site is just inside what looks like a private house from the outside street.
The fun note of this part of the site visit is how this Theatre is connected underneath the actual real houses, in fact the entrance is by this old woman cantine while the exist is on a parallel street by the entrance of another piece of houses on the back street.
The visit tour is 1 hours and half, make sure to bring some sweater if you feel the cold because 40 meters underground it is approx 17°C degrees and humid due to water presence, even if outside in summer is easily above 30C.
Well the city of Naples has so many beauties which are speechless, as also the famous phoete Goethe sentenced when he visited Naples in 1787: “Vedi Napoli e puoi muori” (literally: see Naples and then die).
This is a collaborative post by #TeamItaly included in the #TeamChallenge proposed by @ermest. The post is part of the series about Italy: Italian culture between ancient and modern.
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