Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
created as builders dug out the pliable
tufo
sandstone on which the city stands. At street
level, well shafts allowed citizens to lower their buckets and quench their thirst.
Not to be outdone, the Romans wowed the plebs (abbrevi-
ated term for 'plebeians', common Roman citizens) with their
new, improved 70km aqueduct, transporting water from the
River Serino near Avellino to Naples, Pozzuoli and Baia,
where it filled the enormous Piscina Mirabilis.
The next update came in 1629, with the opening of the
Spanish- commissioned 'Carmignano' aqueduct. Expanded in
1770, it finally met its Waterloo in the 1880s, when cholera
outbreaks heralded the building of a more modern, pressurised
version.
Dried up and defunct, the ancient cisterns went from glori-
ous feats of ancient engineering to handy in-house rubbish
tips. As rubbish clogged the well shafts, access into the
sot-
tosuolo
became ever more difficult and within a few genera-
tions the subterranean system that had nourished the city was
left bloated and forgotten.
Top Subter-
ranean Sites
» Catacomba di San Gen-
naro (
Click here
)
» Napoli Sotterranea (
» Catacomba di San Gau-
dioso (
Click here
)
» Complesso Monumentale
di San Lorenzo Maggiore (
» Tunnel Borbonico (
Click
The WWII Revival
It would take the wail of air-raid sirens to reunite the city's sunlit and subterranean sides
once more. With Allied air attacks looming, Mussolini ordered that the ancient cisterns be
turned into civilian shelters. The lakes of rubbish were compacted and covered, old pas-
sageways were enlarged, toilets were built and new staircases were erected. As bombs
showered the city above, tens of thousands took refuge in the dark, damp shelters below.
The fear, frustration and anger of those who took shelter lives on today in the historic
graffiti that still covers the walls, from hand-drawn caricatures of Hitler and 'Il Duce' to
poignant messages like '
Mamma, non piangere'
(Mum, don't cry). For the many whose
homes were destroyed, these subterranean hideouts became semi-permanent dwellings.
Entire families cohabited cisterns, partitioning their makeshift abodes with bedsheets and
furnishing them with the odd ramshackle bed.
Alas, once rebuilding on the ground began, the aqueducts were once again relegated the
role of subterranean dumpsters, with everything from wartime rubble to scooters and Fiats
thrown down the shafts. And in a case of history repeating itself, the historic labyrinth and
its millennia- old secrets faded from the city's collective memory.
