WHAT LIES BENEATH

Delve into Naples’ fascinating past on an exciting descent into a hidden world of ancient wonders. Concealed beneath the city’s vibrant, chaotic streets lie thousands of years of history waiting to be explored! Follow your guide on a subterranean journey back in time, to a dark and silent town that must once have been as busy and lively as the present-day metropolis.

Naples’ roots stretch down deep. Dating as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans, a 900,000 square metre underground maze of caves, tunnels, cisterns and chambers carved out of tuff, runs from ten to forty metres below the city’s buildings, churches and piazze. With your professional guide leading the way, you will sift through layers of history and gain an unforgettable insight into the city’s early beginnings as Neapolis.

Your day starts with an exploration of the Gothic complex of San Lorenzo Maggiore, built in the 13th century on the remains of an ancient Roman forum, which in turn was erected on the site of an earlier Greek agorà. After admiring the beautifully decorated Chapter Hall and Hall of Sisto V, reach the cloister, climb down the time-travel staircase and find yourself hurtled into a bygone era. The archaeological site has been open since 1992, when a painstaking 25-year excavation programme concluded that a two-storey, rectangular-plan market had once occupied this very spot. You are now standing at the very core of the ancient city. Feel the thrill of stepping back 2,000 years as you walk along a cobblestone street, once the main route through the stalls. Walls and store-fronts, still surprisingly intact, allow visitors to vividly re-evoke yesteryear’s urban scene. Learn what life was like centuries ago as you peek inside the shops. You will come across a bakery, a butcher’s, a laundry, a winery and the aerarium, the tax collectors’ office. Your private guide will enrich your tour with historical curiosities, point out interesting discoveries and portray colourful scenes of everyday Naples long ago.

Back on the surface, try spotting traces of ancient Naples that still survive in the city’s urban fabric. Indeed Naples’ contemporary layout, structured in a regular network of streets, still follows the Greek and Roman grid-patterned roads, originally laid thousands of years ago – a tribute to the planning skills of those ancient ancestors whose ideals and vision still shape city life today.

Your guide will certainly lead you down Via San Gregorio Armeno, known for its artisan workshops selling hundreds of exquisitely crafted statuettes and figurines for traditional nativity scenes. Detailed miniatures of the Holy Family, shepherds and donkeys together with representations of pizzerias, fruit markets, gastronomic delights and caricatures of politicians spill out onto the street in a uniquely Neapolitan fusion of the sacred and the profane, of intense creativity and humorous insight.

From here turn right on Via San Biagio dei Librai and reach the Sansevero Chapel. Prince Raimondo di Sangro drew up the iconographic layout of the interior and commissioned skilful 18th century artists with the task of embellishing its walls with allegorical statues. Accounts of the prince’s beliefs, alchemic practices and fascination with the occult will surely intrigue you as you unravel the underlying meaning behind the works displayed here. Giuseppe Sanmartino’s amazingly realistic sculpture of the Veiled Christ is among the chapel’s highlights together with the so-called anatomic machines, two authentic human skeletons bearing precise reproductions of arterial and nervous systems made from beeswax, iron wire and silk… a puzzling, somewhat macabre sight that sparked rumours and dark legends about Prince di Sangro’s evil powers.

Next, cross Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, amble along Via Benedetto Croce and access the cloister of the Church of Santa Chiara, once a place of private contemplation for the nuns of the Order of Saint Clare. Bright hand-painted majolica tiles depicting figs, citrus fruits and vines adorn the sixty-four octagonal columns while the ceramic benches feature everyday scenes of urban and rural life in the 1700s. Additional splashes of green are provided by the garden’s hedges, lemon and orange trees, whose vivid leaves stand out against the cerulean backdrop of the Neapolitan sky.

The final stop on this tour will bring you to the Church of Gesù Nuovo. Originally built in the 15th century as a private noble mansion and converted into a Christian temple by the Jesuits in the late 1500s, the church still preserves the striking facade of the original Palazzo Sanseverino with its distinctive diamond-shaped ashlars. Inside an eclectic, flamboyant parade of Baroque virtuosity, brimming with frescoes, stuccoes and coloured marble decorations, attests to Naples’ prime role in fostering the greatest talents of the 17th century, including Francesco Solimena, Luca Giordano and Cosimo Fanzago.