Culture
Underground Naples — three tunnels you can actually walk
Beyond the well-known Sotterranea tour: the Bourbon Tunnel, the Cimitero delle Fontanelle, and Pausilypon.
The Bourbon Tunnel
Built in 1853 as a royal escape route from Palazzo Reale to the barracks at Chiaia, the Galleria Borbonica was finished too late for Ferdinando II to use. In WWII it became one of Naples' largest air-raid shelters; the graffiti by sheltering families is still legible on the walls.
The standard tour is 90 minutes; the 'speleo' route adds an hour of clambering through cisterns. Book ahead — group sizes are capped.
Fontanelle and Pausilypon
The Cimitero delle Fontanelle in Sanità is free, eerie, and unforgettable: a 17th-century plague ossuary the locals tended as a cult of anonymous skulls into the 1960s. It's a 20-minute walk uphill from the centro storico.
On the Posillipo side, the Roman villa of Pausilypon includes a 770-metre tunnel — the Grotta di Seiano — that opens onto a private cove with the ruins of Vedius Pollio's seaside theatre. Book the morning visit and bring water.
Where to stay
Our homes in Naples
The beating heart of Southern Italy — three millennia of layered history, the world's pizza capital, and a UNESCO old town that hums from dawn to midnight.
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