Napoli Underground

Walking down the streets in Napoli. This street past the little cafe people could drive up the road. You were walking in the streets with cars parked on the side and people driving down the roads.
Waiting for our underground tour to start. People walked down this road as well as drove down the road.

Today was all about exploring Napoli. Our first stop was to Napoli underground. You start the tour by walking down 40 meters before the tour starts. Along the way we say a chapel that was created in the 40s.

Looking 40 meters down (and trying not to drop my phone). We were also worried about having to walk back up all of these stairs (do worry we don’t).
We passed a chapel on the way down. Evidently during WWII people did get married down here.
A look inside of the chapel.
The square at the top used to be an opening for a well. People would drop their buckets down to the bottom to get water. You can still see the old wells from the street, but they are all blocked off now.
The foot holes coming down the side were used when the aqueducts needed to be expanded. The words would climb down to get to the fast moving water below. The Greeks expanded the aqueducts to bring water into the city.

When the aqueducts were no longer used during WWII soldiers went do to make some of the tunnels water, raise the flooring, and create stairs. The tunnels were used in WWII as bomb shelters for the residents of Napoli. When the bomb sirens would sound the people had 8 minutes to get down to the tunnels. People would stay downstairs for hours or days depending on how long the bombing would last.

The opening was a tunnel that we walked through. You had to turn your feet and walk sideways to make it down.
As you can see from Aly walking that the ledge was short and you had to turn your feet to get to the opening for the tunnel.
Walking down the tunnel. You had to shuffle going sideways down the tunnels we did about 4 tunnels like this. None of the tunnels were very long, but the last 2 were very dark.
It was hard to get pictures in the tunnel since we were turned sideways. Not great for people who don’t like small spaces and stairs, but it was really cool down there.
This one we hard to duck and the shuffle down the tunnel it was tricky.
View from the tunnel once we made it through.
During WWII rich people would bring down beds and claim areas for themselves. Once the war was over the city needed a place to through all of the trash and rubble from the bombings, so they put everything down in the tunnels. Only about 9% of the tunnels have been cleaned out and are open to explore.
The street signs downstairs match the roads above, so even down in the tunnels you know what streets run above you.
This photo was taking after the Italians surrender to the Americans in October 1943. You can see all of the rubble that was left from the bombings. Where this picture hangs in the tunnel is directly under the part of the street above.
This archway is area that the photo from above was taken.

One thought on “Napoli Underground”

  1. Napoli underground looks very interesting. I did not know anything about it, but it seems like a lot of other cities have an “underground” too. Thanks!

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