Day 10: The Naples Underworld

I took a walking tour of the Naples underground. Naples has three layers of civilizations built one atop another. Greeks, then Romans and then today's Naples. The tour took us down 120 feet below the city streets to the greek era. The Aquaducts that we toured supplied water for not only Naples but for many towns arond Naples Bay.

The system was closed for good in the 1880s due to a cholera epidemic. World War Two saw it modified with steps added to access the cisterns and reopened as a bomb shelter. The wells have all been sealed up with 5 meters of trash and garbage- except for the well opening pictured here.

Two cisterns were filled with water to show what it must have been like. You might not think this would be interesting- but in fact I found it fascinating. Clean water is something we take for granted today. Small, little men were employed to crawl into these aquaducts to keep them clean.

Notice the two photos of German war artifacts. The last photo is of a print shop I happened to walk past. The shop was about 10' x 12'. How often have you ever walked past a printing press like this?