Known by None
Member
'Vedi Napoli e poi muori'.... See Naples and die.
It all started with a picture on an internet forum, innocent enough.. it simply showed a broken urn in a dusty passageway and yet there was something about it conjured up an image of history and grandeur that set my mind racing at all the possibilities such a place could hold, such a thing would not look out of place in a museum, or perhaps even held aloft by a grinning Tony Robinson, an archaeologist's dream in a speleological heaven....
At school I was often accused of dreaming and certainly I had an overactive imagination, and whilst this might well have been my problem I had never planned to make it someone elses, and so I'll never know how I managed to convince three of my friends to invest not only their time but also their money in a monumental Easy Jet assisted leap of faith from the safe and normal realms of Britain straight into the unknown heart of Naples.
Indeed it was a risk, I had spent nearly four months searching for a contact who was willing to lead us into this mysterious underworld, fortunately deliverance finally came in the form of Luca from the NUG (Napoli Underground Group), and whilst we maintained constant contact via emails and he had agreed to meet us for a weekend of exploration, I knew that a lot of things could go wrong in an unknown city within a foreign country and on a rendezvous with someone I had never seen before.
Something that went wrong straight away was the fact that we had hired a car, I like to think that I am not prone to exaggeration and so with that in mind I hope you will forgive me for describing my experience of being driven around Naples as nothing short of complete and absolute insanity. No sooner had Les driven us out of the rental depot and we were plunged into chronic madness, I've never seen anything like it in my whole life, I found myself desperately clamouring for a happy place in my mind as we fought our way through head on traffic, scooter sandwiches and pedestrians who practically climbed over your car to cross the road, whether it was moving or not. Parking consisted of driving into the next persons rear bumper then engaging the handbrake (sometimes) and traffic lights were only observed by the weak, even Les who is renowned for white van man shenanigans was at a loss for words.... I always joked that while Les might be the king of the road in the UK due to his rather 'Gung Ho' driving style, if he ever met himself coming the other way he'd be stuffed... unfortunately for Les this was karma city and it seemed like every motorist had the edge on him and I think we all secretly wondered how long it would be before he cracked up or we wrecked the car.
The 3.4 kilometres to our hotel turned into a near Darwinian struggle lasting about 45 minutes with Andy clutching the Tom Tom as if it was the Holy book and giving orders like we were engaged in a rally, Les often had to go head on with cars to force them to give way... it was an unforgettable experience that I won't be repeating anytime soon without sedation and a Sherman tank.
We were firmly in the back streets, a place where washing was hung to dry, people congregated in huge groups to talk and men cooked colossal squids on a barbecue (yes really) this was already shaping up to be an adventure and we hadn't even gotten out of the car.
Our hotel was proving tricky to find and so Andy and myself disembarked and went searching for it on foot, we soon found it and I had also gotten in touch with Luca who was coming to find us. Andy rejoined Les and Cookie in the vehicle to show them the way to the hotel, whilst I remained there so that I could meet with Luca.
Unbeknownst to me Les had decided to test himself further by attempting to drive down an alley way that was almost exactly the same width as the car, I'd have loved to have seen a photo of this, but unfortunately no-one could open the doors to get out and take one.
Once we had checked in and dropped off our gear it was time to drink beer, unwind and discuss battle plans with Luca who I was very glad to finally meet with face to face, fortunately Luca spoke exceptional English which worked rather well because the rest of us were bloody awful at Italian. This wasn't to say that our plans didn't have some translation issues however, in my meticulous planning for this trip I had overlooked one detail which was the length of the pitches, I figured they would be in the 5-10 metre range and so when I asked Luca to confirm and he duly responded with a cheery '300metres' I nearly choked on my beer, a quick look at my comrades confirmed that I was also about to get lynched, I had to do something and quick and so I queried "300 metres on one drop?" to which Luca replied that of course this wasn't the case and the longest drop was 90 metres, this wasn't much better and I think Les was about to attack, but I figured if I just kept repeating my question in a robot like fashion then the pitches would get smaller and I wouldn't have to carry out my plan of waiting till everyone was asleep and then sneaking back to Britain in shame, so I had one more desperate try at rewording my question and fortunately realised we were both talking about completely different things and that in fact the pitches we were doing were only 10 and 7 metre drops. I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief, more beer was taken and I was very careful in future to ask my questions correctly and clearly.
Saturday 14/03/09 The Great Napoli Time Machine.
With morning came the frantic gear checks and preparations for today's big trip, I discovered with no small amount of rage that my light had patiently waited to get all the way to Italy before it had total and utter failure, which amused and still does amuse my comrades.
Nevermind, Andy kindly loaned me his backup light and so with our gear and cameras we set off to meet up with Luca and begin our journey into the underworld of Naples.
We met on the steps of the church of Pietrasanta, the oldest church in Naples, where we were introduced to Fullvio and Carlo... like Luca they were both members of NUG and it was Full's photos that had initially inspired me to come here. We were soon led inside the church to perhaps one of the most amazing underground entrances I have yet to see, a grate was lifted up revealing a small flight of stairs which dramatically ended in a huge iron gate that made the most amazing groaning noises when dragged open, this led into a huge undercroft that was filled wall to wall with marble carvings and tablets that were no doubt many hundreds of years old and had been broken off in an previous earthquake.
We kitted ourselves up here and set off down a huge flight of stairs to a black hole in the floor, with the remnants of a rusty ladder poking over the top, a quick depth assessment revealed this to be about 10 metres, a quick ladder assessment revealed that I would in fact be abseiling this one.
This ladder is not your friend Photo by Les Williams
I wasn't alone in this prudent decision and once we had all touched down we made our way into the darkness proper and up a small climb to the second pitch. We'd already heard a lot about this pitch and Luca had kindly brought a hammer in anticipation...see one of the first things I noticed when I met Luca, Carlos and Full was that I was a lot bigger than them, which when caving in a new place is always a bit worrying. So when Luca mentioned a squeeze I already knew I was in trouble, when it turned out to be a squeeze above a 9 metre pitch I realised hammer or no hammer, we might well be stuffed. Anyhow my luck was in, I'd assessed the situation and constructed a plan that consisted of pulling up two metres of slack rope, attaching my stop and then letting gravity do the rest. This worked surprisingly well which meant I got to sit at the bottom of the pitch and gloat while certain members of my party faffed, got their heads stuck and generally showed us up in front of our Italian friends. No-one needed to mention how much of a nightmare this was going to be to get back up..... although Les promptly did and in a loud manner.
Air Walk (tm) Photo by Les Williams
We dekitted and took in our surroundings, we had abseiled in via a hole at the top of a giant water cistern that had been hollowed out of the local tuff stone by the Greeks...it was at about this time that I realised we had gone back nearly 3000 years in time, this was it, the reason I had come here.
Luca explained that a lot of the aqueducts started off with these giant cisterns, and that they had eventually been tunneled between and modified to hold more water and so they created a huge network that provided all of the water to Naples, some 2700 years ago. The Greeks and then the Romans had done extensive work in digging out the passageways that we were now stooping and crawling our way along and in recent times this amazing place had found use as a shelter for the population from World War II bombing raids. It was these shelters that we were going to see first and as the passageways became wider and changed their characteristics from the wonderful mellow brown tuff walls to the more practical and modern wartime whitewash, it was apparent we had arrived at our first part of history.
Interpretive dance seminar inconvenienced by blackout Photo by David Cooke
I have been in plenty of air raid shelters before, but none quite so pristine as this, it was completely untouched since the last residents turned the lights out, stole the light bulbs and left.... the first thing I noticed was the lack of graffiti and tagging, there was none. The walls were completely untouched, and all over them were networks of wiring that had been set up in the war and were still perfectly in place, right down to the porcelain fittings . Luca explained how the cisterns had been joined together to make these grand chambers, and how people had actually lived down here for weeks on end, it was poignant to think of the uncertainty people must have faced down here in the gloom, no doubt cramped and probably quite smelly and for all the wonderment and intrigue I felt as a casual explorer here, I all too aware that the novelty would wear off if being here became a thing of necessity or even my very survival depended on it. These aqueducts had saved plenty of lives too, in a city of millions only several hundred died to the bombings, testimony to a purpose well served. On the wall in a prominent place was a large wooden crucifix, the only piece of wood in this place that hadn't crumbled to dust, a remnant that was most fitting I thought.
A further look around revealed a cubicle with a still working toilet, clearly testimony to Italian plumbing skills to still have water in after almost 70 years! most impressive, one of the most breath taking sights for me was in a side passage nearby which found us climbing up a seemingly endless flight of spiral stairs. We were told that we would need to be quiet here as we were directly below a monastery and so I reached the top and looked over the edge to behold the fantastic architecture wind it's way down into the darkness like one of those strange puzzles that trick the eye.
Look into the eye, don't look around the eye look into the eye Photo by Les Williams
We were soon moving on, jumping from the 1940s to some 2700 years or more previously, in the wonderfully carved out tunnels and cisterns, all painstakingly pickaxed and chiselled out by hand in what was an amazing accomplishment of architecture and construction that is generally only possible with the utilisation of slave labour, where every inch of passageway was pitted with the pick marks that had formed them, every couple of feet a recess was set into the wall which would have held the oil lamps providing the only light that the people who had toiled here would probably ever have been used to. Often we found ourselves traversing over small canals of water, a trickling glimpse of their former use, I fell in.... Les laughed.
Every now and then the small canals would give way to a large water cistern which now empty served as a huge chamber, the tide marks around the walls were a telltale sign of the years of varying water qualities and levels, Luca called one of these cisterns 'The Wave chamber' due to the many coloured bands on the walls.
It wasn't long before we started finding artifacts, a pile in the corner contained broken clay pots, a hole in the wall revealed a partial amphora... everywhere there were scintillating mosaic tiles of indeterminable decade, century or even millenia, whilst here was an accumulation of debris encompassing the whole of the past several millenia, it was hard to tell between old and new and although a great deal was newer (albeit AD rather than BC) a great deal was certainly older.
I was in my element, and soon we were all finding interesting items, from a near fossilized skeleton of some kind of rodent to a perfectly wrought glass lamp, untouched since the day its last light was extinguished.
One of the biggest privileges I think we were granted was the freedom to explore, Luca and Full had surveys that just ended in blanks with countless tunells still branching away like tree roots, unexplored and enticing.. none of us needed any encouragement to set off into the unknown in pursuit of treasures and sights untold. There were so many different passageways that everyone seemed to have their own personal aqueduct to explore and when we found ourselves in a huge cistern I discovered all manner of artifacts in the huge debris cone nearby, an almost intact Greek urn of unknown age and a very crude ancient looking red clay pitcher were among the best pieces. There was simply too much to see and discover and not nearly enough time, eventually we had to head back leaving behind us plenty of ongoing passageway unchecked along with countless easy digs that would have required perhaps a minute or two of hand digging to break through into more new stuff. It was a blessing and a curse to partake in such a wonderful dose of exploration fever only to leave so much unexplored, yet perhaps that is part of the wonder of it all, it was the mystery that drew me here and I am sure it is the mystery that will draw me back.
'Rat, Pot, Lamp'
First two photos by David Cooke, third photo by Andy Morse
There was a great degree of faffing on the way out, the second pitch in particular which was awkward enough on the way down, now that gravity was against us it was even more exciting. When I reached the top I did my best to think through how I was going to get myself in the squeeze with all my gear on and not get hung up at the same time, in the end I opted for a bit of thrashing and some choice expletives and it seemed to work fine. Once I had gotten myself through I was free to laugh at everyone else struggling, except no-one else was... I found it hard to conceal my disappointment.
An interesting climb up the ladder that was only surpassed in its rustiness by its incredible wobbliness and we were back in the church basement, getting changed amongst the carving and reliefs of eons past whilst eating all of Andy's sweets and generally feeling rather pleased with ourselves. An amazing and thought provoking trip.
Part two below...
It all started with a picture on an internet forum, innocent enough.. it simply showed a broken urn in a dusty passageway and yet there was something about it conjured up an image of history and grandeur that set my mind racing at all the possibilities such a place could hold, such a thing would not look out of place in a museum, or perhaps even held aloft by a grinning Tony Robinson, an archaeologist's dream in a speleological heaven....
At school I was often accused of dreaming and certainly I had an overactive imagination, and whilst this might well have been my problem I had never planned to make it someone elses, and so I'll never know how I managed to convince three of my friends to invest not only their time but also their money in a monumental Easy Jet assisted leap of faith from the safe and normal realms of Britain straight into the unknown heart of Naples.
Indeed it was a risk, I had spent nearly four months searching for a contact who was willing to lead us into this mysterious underworld, fortunately deliverance finally came in the form of Luca from the NUG (Napoli Underground Group), and whilst we maintained constant contact via emails and he had agreed to meet us for a weekend of exploration, I knew that a lot of things could go wrong in an unknown city within a foreign country and on a rendezvous with someone I had never seen before.
Something that went wrong straight away was the fact that we had hired a car, I like to think that I am not prone to exaggeration and so with that in mind I hope you will forgive me for describing my experience of being driven around Naples as nothing short of complete and absolute insanity. No sooner had Les driven us out of the rental depot and we were plunged into chronic madness, I've never seen anything like it in my whole life, I found myself desperately clamouring for a happy place in my mind as we fought our way through head on traffic, scooter sandwiches and pedestrians who practically climbed over your car to cross the road, whether it was moving or not. Parking consisted of driving into the next persons rear bumper then engaging the handbrake (sometimes) and traffic lights were only observed by the weak, even Les who is renowned for white van man shenanigans was at a loss for words.... I always joked that while Les might be the king of the road in the UK due to his rather 'Gung Ho' driving style, if he ever met himself coming the other way he'd be stuffed... unfortunately for Les this was karma city and it seemed like every motorist had the edge on him and I think we all secretly wondered how long it would be before he cracked up or we wrecked the car.
The 3.4 kilometres to our hotel turned into a near Darwinian struggle lasting about 45 minutes with Andy clutching the Tom Tom as if it was the Holy book and giving orders like we were engaged in a rally, Les often had to go head on with cars to force them to give way... it was an unforgettable experience that I won't be repeating anytime soon without sedation and a Sherman tank.
We were firmly in the back streets, a place where washing was hung to dry, people congregated in huge groups to talk and men cooked colossal squids on a barbecue (yes really) this was already shaping up to be an adventure and we hadn't even gotten out of the car.
Our hotel was proving tricky to find and so Andy and myself disembarked and went searching for it on foot, we soon found it and I had also gotten in touch with Luca who was coming to find us. Andy rejoined Les and Cookie in the vehicle to show them the way to the hotel, whilst I remained there so that I could meet with Luca.
Unbeknownst to me Les had decided to test himself further by attempting to drive down an alley way that was almost exactly the same width as the car, I'd have loved to have seen a photo of this, but unfortunately no-one could open the doors to get out and take one.
Once we had checked in and dropped off our gear it was time to drink beer, unwind and discuss battle plans with Luca who I was very glad to finally meet with face to face, fortunately Luca spoke exceptional English which worked rather well because the rest of us were bloody awful at Italian. This wasn't to say that our plans didn't have some translation issues however, in my meticulous planning for this trip I had overlooked one detail which was the length of the pitches, I figured they would be in the 5-10 metre range and so when I asked Luca to confirm and he duly responded with a cheery '300metres' I nearly choked on my beer, a quick look at my comrades confirmed that I was also about to get lynched, I had to do something and quick and so I queried "300 metres on one drop?" to which Luca replied that of course this wasn't the case and the longest drop was 90 metres, this wasn't much better and I think Les was about to attack, but I figured if I just kept repeating my question in a robot like fashion then the pitches would get smaller and I wouldn't have to carry out my plan of waiting till everyone was asleep and then sneaking back to Britain in shame, so I had one more desperate try at rewording my question and fortunately realised we were both talking about completely different things and that in fact the pitches we were doing were only 10 and 7 metre drops. I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief, more beer was taken and I was very careful in future to ask my questions correctly and clearly.
Saturday 14/03/09 The Great Napoli Time Machine.
With morning came the frantic gear checks and preparations for today's big trip, I discovered with no small amount of rage that my light had patiently waited to get all the way to Italy before it had total and utter failure, which amused and still does amuse my comrades.
Nevermind, Andy kindly loaned me his backup light and so with our gear and cameras we set off to meet up with Luca and begin our journey into the underworld of Naples.
We met on the steps of the church of Pietrasanta, the oldest church in Naples, where we were introduced to Fullvio and Carlo... like Luca they were both members of NUG and it was Full's photos that had initially inspired me to come here. We were soon led inside the church to perhaps one of the most amazing underground entrances I have yet to see, a grate was lifted up revealing a small flight of stairs which dramatically ended in a huge iron gate that made the most amazing groaning noises when dragged open, this led into a huge undercroft that was filled wall to wall with marble carvings and tablets that were no doubt many hundreds of years old and had been broken off in an previous earthquake.
We kitted ourselves up here and set off down a huge flight of stairs to a black hole in the floor, with the remnants of a rusty ladder poking over the top, a quick depth assessment revealed this to be about 10 metres, a quick ladder assessment revealed that I would in fact be abseiling this one.
This ladder is not your friend Photo by Les Williams
I wasn't alone in this prudent decision and once we had all touched down we made our way into the darkness proper and up a small climb to the second pitch. We'd already heard a lot about this pitch and Luca had kindly brought a hammer in anticipation...see one of the first things I noticed when I met Luca, Carlos and Full was that I was a lot bigger than them, which when caving in a new place is always a bit worrying. So when Luca mentioned a squeeze I already knew I was in trouble, when it turned out to be a squeeze above a 9 metre pitch I realised hammer or no hammer, we might well be stuffed. Anyhow my luck was in, I'd assessed the situation and constructed a plan that consisted of pulling up two metres of slack rope, attaching my stop and then letting gravity do the rest. This worked surprisingly well which meant I got to sit at the bottom of the pitch and gloat while certain members of my party faffed, got their heads stuck and generally showed us up in front of our Italian friends. No-one needed to mention how much of a nightmare this was going to be to get back up..... although Les promptly did and in a loud manner.
Air Walk (tm) Photo by Les Williams
We dekitted and took in our surroundings, we had abseiled in via a hole at the top of a giant water cistern that had been hollowed out of the local tuff stone by the Greeks...it was at about this time that I realised we had gone back nearly 3000 years in time, this was it, the reason I had come here.
Luca explained that a lot of the aqueducts started off with these giant cisterns, and that they had eventually been tunneled between and modified to hold more water and so they created a huge network that provided all of the water to Naples, some 2700 years ago. The Greeks and then the Romans had done extensive work in digging out the passageways that we were now stooping and crawling our way along and in recent times this amazing place had found use as a shelter for the population from World War II bombing raids. It was these shelters that we were going to see first and as the passageways became wider and changed their characteristics from the wonderful mellow brown tuff walls to the more practical and modern wartime whitewash, it was apparent we had arrived at our first part of history.
Interpretive dance seminar inconvenienced by blackout Photo by David Cooke
I have been in plenty of air raid shelters before, but none quite so pristine as this, it was completely untouched since the last residents turned the lights out, stole the light bulbs and left.... the first thing I noticed was the lack of graffiti and tagging, there was none. The walls were completely untouched, and all over them were networks of wiring that had been set up in the war and were still perfectly in place, right down to the porcelain fittings . Luca explained how the cisterns had been joined together to make these grand chambers, and how people had actually lived down here for weeks on end, it was poignant to think of the uncertainty people must have faced down here in the gloom, no doubt cramped and probably quite smelly and for all the wonderment and intrigue I felt as a casual explorer here, I all too aware that the novelty would wear off if being here became a thing of necessity or even my very survival depended on it. These aqueducts had saved plenty of lives too, in a city of millions only several hundred died to the bombings, testimony to a purpose well served. On the wall in a prominent place was a large wooden crucifix, the only piece of wood in this place that hadn't crumbled to dust, a remnant that was most fitting I thought.
A further look around revealed a cubicle with a still working toilet, clearly testimony to Italian plumbing skills to still have water in after almost 70 years! most impressive, one of the most breath taking sights for me was in a side passage nearby which found us climbing up a seemingly endless flight of spiral stairs. We were told that we would need to be quiet here as we were directly below a monastery and so I reached the top and looked over the edge to behold the fantastic architecture wind it's way down into the darkness like one of those strange puzzles that trick the eye.
Look into the eye, don't look around the eye look into the eye Photo by Les Williams
We were soon moving on, jumping from the 1940s to some 2700 years or more previously, in the wonderfully carved out tunnels and cisterns, all painstakingly pickaxed and chiselled out by hand in what was an amazing accomplishment of architecture and construction that is generally only possible with the utilisation of slave labour, where every inch of passageway was pitted with the pick marks that had formed them, every couple of feet a recess was set into the wall which would have held the oil lamps providing the only light that the people who had toiled here would probably ever have been used to. Often we found ourselves traversing over small canals of water, a trickling glimpse of their former use, I fell in.... Les laughed.
Every now and then the small canals would give way to a large water cistern which now empty served as a huge chamber, the tide marks around the walls were a telltale sign of the years of varying water qualities and levels, Luca called one of these cisterns 'The Wave chamber' due to the many coloured bands on the walls.
It wasn't long before we started finding artifacts, a pile in the corner contained broken clay pots, a hole in the wall revealed a partial amphora... everywhere there were scintillating mosaic tiles of indeterminable decade, century or even millenia, whilst here was an accumulation of debris encompassing the whole of the past several millenia, it was hard to tell between old and new and although a great deal was newer (albeit AD rather than BC) a great deal was certainly older.
I was in my element, and soon we were all finding interesting items, from a near fossilized skeleton of some kind of rodent to a perfectly wrought glass lamp, untouched since the day its last light was extinguished.
One of the biggest privileges I think we were granted was the freedom to explore, Luca and Full had surveys that just ended in blanks with countless tunells still branching away like tree roots, unexplored and enticing.. none of us needed any encouragement to set off into the unknown in pursuit of treasures and sights untold. There were so many different passageways that everyone seemed to have their own personal aqueduct to explore and when we found ourselves in a huge cistern I discovered all manner of artifacts in the huge debris cone nearby, an almost intact Greek urn of unknown age and a very crude ancient looking red clay pitcher were among the best pieces. There was simply too much to see and discover and not nearly enough time, eventually we had to head back leaving behind us plenty of ongoing passageway unchecked along with countless easy digs that would have required perhaps a minute or two of hand digging to break through into more new stuff. It was a blessing and a curse to partake in such a wonderful dose of exploration fever only to leave so much unexplored, yet perhaps that is part of the wonder of it all, it was the mystery that drew me here and I am sure it is the mystery that will draw me back.
'Rat, Pot, Lamp'
First two photos by David Cooke, third photo by Andy Morse
There was a great degree of faffing on the way out, the second pitch in particular which was awkward enough on the way down, now that gravity was against us it was even more exciting. When I reached the top I did my best to think through how I was going to get myself in the squeeze with all my gear on and not get hung up at the same time, in the end I opted for a bit of thrashing and some choice expletives and it seemed to work fine. Once I had gotten myself through I was free to laugh at everyone else struggling, except no-one else was... I found it hard to conceal my disappointment.
An interesting climb up the ladder that was only surpassed in its rustiness by its incredible wobbliness and we were back in the church basement, getting changed amongst the carving and reliefs of eons past whilst eating all of Andy's sweets and generally feeling rather pleased with ourselves. An amazing and thought provoking trip.
Part two below...
