Napoli Sotterranea, Centro Storico
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“Napoli Sotterranea” means ‘underground Naples’ and indeed this is an outfit that takes tourists inside a part of the extensive underground tunnels and chambers beneath the city’s street level. Some of these underground spaces were used as air-raid shelters during WWII. This is the more touristy of the two locations that such tours are offered from under the name Napoli Sotterranea – the other being the one in the Spanish Quarter.
More background info: Naples was built on top of very thick layers of tuff rock, which consists of compressed volcanic ash from prehistoric eruptions (not just from the still active Mt Vesuvius but also other, now extinct volcanoes in the region). The tuff was quarried underground and much of Naples is built from this malleable yet strong material. Hence the underground of the city is like a Swiss cheese or honeycomb, with miles and miles of caverns and tunnels.
In addition, underground cisterns fed by underground aqueducts were constructed, beginning as early as during the time when Naples was an ancient Greek city. Thus water from sources many miles away was provided (as Naples does not have a river or lake). For centuries these cisterns supplied the city’s residents with drinking water, which was collected by amphorae or buckets released on ropes from wells at the surface.
However, when these supplies were contaminated by sewage, this led to outbreaks of cholera. The very worst such epidemic was that of 1884 (see under Naples), after which the city authorities embarked on a substantial project of improving sewers and generally making sanitary conditions safer.
Once Naples had running water, the old underground cisterns and aqueducts became redundant. But during WWII, when Naples became the most bombed city in Italy, the underground spaces were rediscovered and used as air-raid shelters. For that purpose some caverns were enlarged, new flooring laid, ablutions constructed and electric lighting installed, as well as communications gear; even an underground chapel was provided for people to practise their Catholic religion deep under the city. Most people stayed only a few hours in the shelters initially, but when the air raids intensified after the Allied landings in, and subsequent occupation of, Sicily in the summer of 1943, longer stays were required. Sleeping quarters were added – where most people slept on the floor but some had beds. There were even some babies born down underground.
After the war, when large parts of Naples lay in ruins from all the Allied bombing raids, the underground spaces were used for simply dumping the rubble from destroyed buildings. After that those caverns under Naples (they say about one third of the city stands on “voids”!) were nearly forgotten.
In the late 1960s, a group of enthusiasts rediscovered this tunnel system and began exploring and eventually clearing out parts of the system by removing the wartime rubble – by hand and with only simple tools.
The first occasional tours started at the end of the 1970s, and at the end of the 1980s the association now known as Napoli Sotterranea was founded.
These days the tours are a major element of the rich tourism portfolio of Naples and are regularly listed amongst the top things to do in the city (e.g. on websites like Tripadvisor).
Be aware of the potential for confusion, though, as there are two locations where such tours take place and they are not always neatly distinguished in online reviews and coverage. The tour that this chapter describes is the one that starts at Napoli Sotterranea’s location in the Centro Storico, i.e. the historic centre of Naples from a small piazza just off the busy tourist thoroughfare that is Via dei Tribunali (informally aka “pizza street”).
I actually went on a tour at the other location, Napoli Sotterranea in the Quartieri Spagnoli (‘Spanish Quarter), first – with a ticket booked online with a discount offered through the hotel booking platform I had used. Only when I saw the address of the meeting point noted on the ticket did I realize that this was not the location in the Centro Storico. Since I was keen to compare both tours and felt obliged to check out the more popular other tour (this chapter’s) as well, my wife and I simply turned up there a couple of days later without an online booking but were able to join a tour with only half an hour or so waiting required. But that was in early January. In high season it might make more sense to pre-book online.
What there is to see: When I went on this tour it was very busy. Throngs of people were queuing and several staff were engaged in crowd management – those for a tour in Italian were ordered to the right, left for the English-language tours. People with pre-booked tickets were let in first, but eventually those who wanted to purchase their ticket on the spot, including myself, got their turn as well. On the way in I handed over the (exact) cash and a woman handed us our little tickets.
We were then led down stairs into the underground and eventually came to the first gathering point and the guide started his narration. Our group had about 40 participants so it was not always easy to be in a position where the guide could be understood clearly. I was glad I had already done the tour at the Spanish Quarter (with a much smaller group and a livelier guide), so I was already familiar with the basics of the construction of the tunnels, the nature of tuff, the WWII-era stories (when these underground spaces were used as air-raid shelters) and the legends of the Naples underground. So at times I deliberately stayed out of hearing range and rather took photos from the edge the crowd.
Early on during the tour we gathered by a war-themed installation consisting of a group of soldier figures made from rebar wearing steel helmets and gas masks, plus a crude mock-up of a tank (how did they it get down here, I wondered – probably in pieces and assembled on the spot).
We passed through several caverns and passageways, at one point past a set of ablutions, until we came to a spot where there was a little garden of sorts with special lamps providing artificial sunlight. Apparently the underground is good for growing things this way, with the right temperature and humidity. There was even a baby pineapple.
We eventually reached the point where the guide announced that we were about to move through some very narrow passageways, where at some stretches you had to move along sideways in order to fit through. Those who did not fancy that “adventure” were free to stay behind and wait until everybody taking part had come back out. The guide asked for a volunteer to bring up the rear, and as I was wearing a bright blue rain jacket (it was a grim day at the surface) that was easy to identify I raised my hand. That way I was also able to photograph the narrow tunnel behind me without other people being in the frame. It was indeed a tight squeeze at points and at the narrowest bits I noticed a slight indication of claustrophobia creeping in on me, but before it could get a hold of me properly we had come back out and rejoined the rest of the group.
The narrow passageways were originally for channelling water through at higher pressure and speed to fill the cisterns, but the one we passed through was obviously a dry one. We had passed a working passage with fast-flowing water a bit earlier, though and the rush of water in the dark provided an eerie soundscape.
Next we came to a set of cisterns filled with water, a couple of feet, maybe a metre deep, and emitting a bluish-greenish glow that was very atmospheric. An amphora suspended from a well hole in the high ceiling above demonstrated the purpose for which these cisterns had been built originally (see above).
A bit further on we started climbing the stairs back up and passed a cave worker’s outfit, a cart full of amphorae and then emerged into the “museum” part. This is a single room with a few glass display cabinets along three walls that contained various relics from WWII, such as uniforms, helmets, flags and weapons. There was a British section, an American and an Italian one as well as one full of Nazi memorabilia, including some swastikas and a black SS uniform. In the Nazi section were also a couple of text panels, but there was no time to linger and read, because this was not yet the end of the tour as I had assumed.
Instead we were led back out into the street (and the rain) and a short distance round the block where we entered a house. Here the guide rolled away a camouflaging rug to reveal a trapdoor under it, which he proceeded to open. This gave access to a stairwell leading down and we all filed in …
This took us to some remains of an ancient Roman theatre that apparently had been forgotten about until it was rediscovered under the floor of this residential house. At one point you could step on a wooden box to peek over a ledge at a hole in the floorboards above to see a reconstruction of a living room on the floor above.
The guide pointed out some specifics of Roman construction techniques with different shapes of bricks and a range of arrangements used in order to make the walls stronger and prevent cracks. The next day I recognized the same building style in walls at Pompeii. So this extra was somewhat educational. Otherwise, though, this add-on visit to the Roman theatre relic felt a bit like an afterthought and didn’t actually sit so well with the main part of the tour, I thought. It also detracted from the time spent down in the main underground spaces.
All in all, however, it was a good activity, even though I found the tour in the Spanish Quarter a bit better and the one at the Bourbon Tunnels way better. Yet, the tours at the Centro Storico were evidently the far more popular ones, going by the group sizes and frequency of tours. And it’s only here that you get to see cisterns filled with bluish water. So if you can do only one or two of these tours it’s not so easy to make a choice.
Location: at Piazza San Gaetano 69, next to the Basilica di San Paolo Maggiore, in the heart of the historic centre of Naples, just off Via dei Tribunali, one of the city’s streets most developed for tourism.
Google Maps locator: [40.85127, 14.2567]
Access and costs: easy enough to find (if you know the correct address); by guided tour only; not cheap, but still adequately priced.
Details: To get to the starting point of the tour you have to walk, the nearest public transport (other than taxi) is quite a distance away (e.g. the metro stops Dante or Duomo). Via dei Tribunali is a major tourist artery, always busy and heaving with people. Head for Piazza San Gaetano, which is roughly at the halfway point of the length of Via dei Tribunali. Look for the “Napoli Sotterranea” sign over the entrance to the left of the church.
Theoretically you can just turn up at the address and see if you can join a tour; but many people rather pre-book their tickets online in advance. To do so make sure to go to the correct website (napolisotterranea[DOT]org – and not “lanapolisotterranea[DOT]it, which is for the tours in the Spanish Quarter!) and click the “queue-jump ticket” button to get to the booking engine. If you are not pre-booking but want to pay on the spot, it’s best to have the exact cash because the payment and ticket-handing-out process is very rushed.
Tours nominally take place roughly every hour from 10 a.m., when the last tour departs is not entirely clear; according to the booking engine online it should be 6 p.m., but to be on the safe side I’d opt for an earlier slot. When I was there tours departed more frequently than just hourly so that more than one tour were underground at the same time and had to co-ordinate their locations within the underground space. At one point we had to make space to let an earlier tour through.
The regular fee for online tickets for the tour is 18€ for individual adults (students aged up to 24 pay 15€, children between 5 and ten cost 10€; larger groups are granted slight discounts).
Note that the tours include lots of steps so are thus not for people with significant mobility issues; nor are they for those prone to suffering from claustrophobia. At one point in the tour a very narrow passageway is included that could not be negotiated by people of a certain size and stature … but this section is optional. Some of my group did opt out and waited in the designated cavern until the rest of the group had finished the narrow part.
Time required: The tours nominally last 60 minutes, but the one I was on overran a bit. If you don’t have a pre-booked ticket with a given time slot expect to have to wait before you can join a tour (they promise no longer than 90 minutes).
Combinations with other dark destinations: Most obviously, there are the two other underground tours you can go on in Naples, the Napoli Sotterranea tour in the Quartieri Spagnoli (‘Spanish Quarter’) and the Bourbon Tunnels. Of the two Napoli Sotterranea tours, I found the one in the Spanish Quarter the more enjoyable, because it was far less crowded, less touristy, and the underground spaces were somewhat more impressive than the ones under the historic centre. That said, though, the underground tour in the historic centre had a few elements the other tour lacked, namely the water-filled cisterns, which are quite atmospheric, and also the museum part at street level (plus the add-on of the Roman theatre remains). Of the three underground tours, though, the very best, in my view, is that with the Bourbon Tunnels. It has more WWII-era relics than the other two combined, plus the extremely atmospheric accumulation of car and bike wrecks towards the end of the tour.
Geographically, the nearest other dark attractions are the Chiesa di Santa Luciella ai Librai and the Anatomical Museum, as well as the Cappella Sansevero, all just a short walk away from Via dei Tribunali.
See also under Naples in general.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: Given that the tours start (and end) right in the middle of the World Heritage Site that is the historic centre of Naples, it’s well placed to combine with a wide range of non-dark attractions, for instance the Cathedral (Duomo), the Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo or the National Archaeological Museum.
