Underground Naples is a world unto itself, and one that continues to provide surprises for the city’s inhabitants and the archaeologists who explore its labyrinthine tunnels dug out of the tuff. In fact, two cities coexist in present-day Naples: one – above ground – is the famous chaotic, crowded, and fascinating urban sprawl that lies along a magnificent bay, overlooked by Mount Vesuvius; the other, darker Naples is hidden underneath it. This is where the remains of a complicated sequence of different structures spanning more than 2,500 years are slowly being revealed by ongoing excavations and restoration projects. The stratified Greek, Roman, medieval, Bourbon, and modern urban convolutions have survived the destructions of wars, pillaging, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. They include a theatre where Emperor Nero performed in AD 64, city walls and gates, water cisterns, crypts, catacombs, and caves where Neapolitans saved themselves from Nazi incursions and Allied bombing during the Second World War.
At the very bottom of this multi-layered subterranean maze are the remains of Neapolis (‘new city’ in Greek), one of the many Greek colonies established on the shores of southern Italy from around the 8th century BC. According to the Geographica, written by the Greek philosopher and historian Strabo (c.64 BC-c.24 AD), the colonisation of Magna Graecia – as the Romans called the Hellenised coasts of Campania (of which Naples is the regional capital), Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily – began at the time of the Trojan Wars and lasted for several centuries in the wake of demographic pressure, famines, and internecine wars in the Greek homelands, along with a need for new commercial outlets and entrepots.
It was actually Euboeans who founded the very first colonies in Campania: Pithekoussai on the island of Ischia and Kumai (Cumae in Latin) on the mainland facing it. Kumai soon developed into a major centre that later was to become a rich Roman city. There is, however, increasing archaeological evidence that Mycenaean trading hubs were operating in southern Italy many centuries before. Fragments of Mycenaean/Late Helladic pottery were found in the Bronze Age settlement (17th-15th century BC) of the small island of Vivara, next to Procida, whose sunken harbour lies at a depth of about 14m below sea level. Procida, the 2022 Italian Capital of Culture, will stage in a new museum (due to be completed this summer) the exhibition Greek before Greeks (scheduled to run from June to September), which will present the most recent evidence on the earliest Greek presence in Campania.
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