Forty meters below the characteristic and lively streets of the Historic Center of Naples, there lies a different unexplored and isolated world characterized by a labyrinth of tunnels, tanks and cavities that form a real city which is the negative of the city on surface.
Napoli Sotterranea is the heart of Naples, and the place from which the city was born, a world which is about 2400 years old. Every historic epic, from the foundation of Neopolis, to the bombs of WWII, has left it’s mark on the walls of the yellow tufa stone, the soul of Naples, and the stone with which the city was built. This “tufacea” rock has particular characteristics of lightness, friableness and stabilities.
This underground was originally used to satisfy the requirements of water. The basement cisterns were used to pick up the rain and used to have material to build in Naples. Under Roman rule the waterworks was extended and improved, but under Angioni rule, in 1266, the city had a new urban expansion with an increase of extraction of “tufo” for new buildings.
Later, this underground came as rescue during the second world war, when it offered refuge to the population adapting the structures of waterworks to the requirements of the citizens.
The guided tours to this underground take you under the Spanish Quarters, in vico S. Anna di Palazzo 52, where Michele and Salvatore Quaranta brothers, have founded the Free Association Underground Hikers that has for objective the grater knowledge of “the inferior” city. When you descend into the cavities of the old cisterns of the Carmignano waterworks, you will be able to admire the feelings of who those took refuge there during the war.
The walls of the underground bear drawings of history pages, names and caricature of personality of the age, customs of the age, soldiers of several nations, dates, information on the two Italian submarines – the Diaspro and the Topazio – that operated during the war, and many other fascinating writings.
