Sottosuolo

Pictures of our adventures Naples can be found here.

I met up with 6 other people upon my arrival in Naples. Two Australians from the Cave Clan, two folks from Minnesota, one from Iowa, and my friend Steve, who accompanied my on my last trip to the Catacombs of Paris. Our purpose in Naples was to explore the Sottosuolo - the vast Underground of Naples. I had come a day late. The rest of the group had already accompanied Fulvio and Luca from Napoli Sotterranea on a trip. What they had experienced was an expedition through the ruins of one of the ancient aqueduct system underneath the city - pictures can be found here.

Naples has one of the most extensive, varied, and interesting undergrounds in the world. The city is a port, surrounded by hills. Because of the proximity of Mt. Vesuvius, the ground is Tufa - a soft, light, volcanic rock that is easily mined. The hills surrounding the old port of Naples are riddled with these huge ancient quarries. Sometimes hundreds of feet high, today they’re used by nearby businesses as storage, parking garages, you name it. In ancient times these quarries were sometimes built or used for other purposes - Roman-era tunnels through the hills used as pedestrian and carriage shortcuts, temples and tombs, catacombs and cemeteries.

Also, as with most ancient Mediterranean cities, much of it is built on the ruins of what came before. Any digging is going to unearth the remnants of the previous settlements underneath it. There’s a little exhibition off the main subway station of various archeological treasures they dug up while digging the subway tunnels. You could even see it in action. A few subway stations were being constructed using the cut-and-cover method. About 10 feet down was the ancient brickwork. The archeologists get a week or so to excavate and catalogue, and then construction moves on.

Add to this all the modern underground networks - steam tunnels, subways, sewers and storm drains. And topping it all off are two separate abandoned aqueduct systems, one dating back from Greek times. During World War II, much of the ancient aqueduct systems had been converted into makeshift air raid shelters. During the huge post-war building boom, rubble from construction and excavation has filled in much of the underground network. It’s only recently that efforts to excavate and document the underground of Naples have been seriously undertaken.

It was this that enabled the rest of the group to go on their expedition. The head of this effort is colloquially known as “The Pope,” and the Pope had let Luca and Fulvio have pretty much free reign with the group. I arrived the next day, disappointed that I had missed the initial expedition. The other underground network I had visited extensively, Paris’s, had been documented and stabilized in the late 18th century. Seeing that process in action in another city was a rare chance that I had missed.

Still, I had a week left in Naples. We knew there was a lot to find. But as we were to find out, Naples is not a city that gives up its secrets to outsiders easily.