Napoli Sotterranea – Underground Naples tour

The name Napoli sotterranea – Underground Naples stands for an accessible path that goes through the bowels of the city, right below the surface, where tunnels, galleries, recesses and aqueducts create a true “under city” that follows the “upper city”.

Since Stone Age, men have been digging into the ground below Naples. The Greeks were the first ones to start underground mining to get the tuff needed to erect the buildings of Neapolis.

During the Roman period, many underground tunnels were dug; moreover, the Romans created a complex aqueducts network that reached Misano.

In the 20th century people stopped digging into the underground due to a cholera epidemic; during the Second World War the tunnels under the city were used as air raid shelters or just to hide people. It was in the 1980s that people understood how historically important those tunnels were. That’s why many associations begun cleaning the site up, turning it into a museum.

In the bowels of the quiet historic centre of Naples there is Napoli sotterranea – Underground Naples, a tour at a depth of 40 metres under the surface through the history of Naples, from the Greek period to the modern age. There are many paths that go through Naples sotterranea, and each of them has the entrance in a specific place around the city.

You can visit the historic centre tunnels and the Greco-Roman aqueduct, both of them can be entered by the access in piazza San Gaetano, the orti ipogei (underground vegetable gardens), the Galleria borbonica (Bourbon Gallery) in via Domenico Morelli, the Crypta Neapolitana (Neapolitan Crypt), the Hellenistic hypogeums and the catacombs, the Second World War air raid shelters, such as the one in Sant’Anna di Palazzo where you can read the writings on the wall made by terrified people hiding underground for hours.

In the slums near Via dei Tribunali, there is a basement that is the doorway to the remains of an ancient Greco-Roman theatre that is part of the underground Napoli.

The paths through Naples sotterranea will take you from one to two hours and each path is absolutely safe.

The paths through Underground Naples are high and wide enough so you won’t feel oppressed .

Those who suffer from claustrophobia can ask the guide to avoid narrow tunnels and galleries. These paths are still closed underground paths so those who suffer from claustrophobia may feel anxious.