Underground Naples

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One of the most enticing thing listed in the online "top things to do in Naples", aside from eating awesome pizza, are the the underground tours. There are Roman cisterns turned war bunker, and the foundations of the Roman era city. We do both in the morning.

Both tours are in the old town, with its tall apartments towering over narrow cobblestone alleys. We hit upon the trinkets alley along the way and see numerous themes: red pepper ornaments, ornaments with fools in black masks, "calamites" which are miniature cones (simplified cornucopias?) filled with pasta or miniatures of bread, grain, or bingo pieces (presumably for good luck), and depictions of religious themes. As I discover from a vendor, there are three things that are good luck in Naples: red peppers, horseshoes, and a humpback (!). What I had interpreted as fools in masks were actually humpbacks in masks.

In opposite corners of a piazza are two underground exhibits. One is a self-guided tour of Roman ruins under a church. Not much embellishment remains, there was one lovely mosaic intact, otherwise it is mainly stone foundations, including a market street. The other is the guided Subterranea tour, which delves into Roman cisterns and in a separate but nearby location explores the remains of a Roman theatre. The cisterns were converted to bunkers during WWII. To make it habitable during the war, it was filled in with rubble and capped with asphalt, and new stairs were chipped into the tufa. To highlight this the tour operators set up war related relics within the cistern. The ancient water level was obvious, since the Romans painted the tufa to seal it. It is also being used by university students to study growth of plants in an underground controlled environment. At one part, we each take a candle and navigate through narrow canyons just wide enough for me to walk, the walls brushing against my hips. We then finish part one in a former wine cellar for the convent above, who still makes wine. In part two of the tour, we walk a few blocks away into an apartment with old furnishings: an early television and beautiful glass lamps. The ceiling was a series of large arcing archways, the first indication that a sought after Roman theatre might be here. The bed rolls into the wall to reveal a cellar door and in the cellar one can see the actor changing rooms. As we walk deeper in, we can see odd modern coverings over the ceiling. These are rooms in modern apartments, unknowingly hovering in the air above ancient history. The main theatre is lost (or perhaps not escavated?). We then walk a few more blocks to an unmarked doorway and into another cavernous space, now filled with ornate dioramas of scenes from an old way of life. above in a corner was a window into a girls bedroom, and she frantically tried to open the window while our tour guide nonchalantly continued the tour. Sometimes this room is used for group cooking classes.

For lunch we try another recommended pizzeria, Di Matteo. There is a crowd outside but it is a mingling of people ordering take out and those waiting for a table. Within ten minutes we make it inside and try their wares. This place is known for it's fried pizzas, which is a fried calzone if I understand correctly, but we are unable to order this because none of the fried pizzas are vegetarian. I deviate from the tried and true margherita, and instead of getting a pizza with sauce and cheese, I get tomatoes and cheese. While the pizza is still a little smokey, it is a subtle taste rather than the strong flavor from da Michele.

In the afternoon my friend and I order our first espressos, and apparently commit multiple faux pas upon research online. One should order directly to the barrista even if they are doing something else, and to order a espresso one simply says "caffe". At this point the barrista provides you your espresso along with a cup of water, which you should drink first, and then consume the espresso in one go at the counter, rather than sitting down. Then pay the cashier. How did we do it? We first ordered two "espressos" from the cashier and paid for these as well as for two pastries. We then picked up the espressos with the mysterious water and sat down in in a sparse back seating area (for tourists perhaps) to sip our espressos and eat our pastries with ease and with a mind to savor it. I then cleansed my palate with the water. Perhaps we do it wrong, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

In the evening we head to the Piazza Plebiscito, to hopefully catch some of the hoopla surrounding the Giro, but we just catch a rap artist playing the crowd.

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Photos

Underground cavern
and the neighbor above

This place is crawling
in dwarfs.

Well up above
with war paraphenalia (not found in cistern)

Our animated tourguide
a budding Woody Allen

The cistern was filled in
roughly a third in height with asphalt when it was used as a bunker in war times.

Subterranean growning
experiment by University students