Underground Naples Tour: Subterranean Crypts and Cloisters

Nowhere gives a better sense of the splendor of the glory of medieval city than the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, whose interior is amongst the finest examples of Gothic architecture in Italy. Plenty of big names in Italian history have passed through here: Boccaccio first encountered the woman who would inspire his character Fiammetta in the basilica, and Petrarch lived in the adjacent monastery for a spell in the 1340s. Descend underground for a real surprise: beneath the basilica lie the monumental remains of the Forum — the civic heart of Roman Naples. On our tour we’ll journey down into the cool, echoing spaces where original pavements, columns and fragments of public life survive, and learn how the medieval church was literally built atop its classical predecessor – an intimate encounter with the city’s foundations.

From civic ruins we move into a darker, more intimate realm: the underground cemetery attached to the church dedicated to the souls in Purgatory. Here, devotion and mortality take an uncanny form — ossuaries, devotional objects and votive inscriptions that speak to Neapolitan beliefs about death, remembrance and the hope for intercession. Here we will learn about the fascinating tradition of the anime pezzentelle, in which Neapolitans have taken to ‘adopting’ anonymous skulls, bringing them flowers and candles and offering prayers to rescue their souls from purgatory. In return the adopted spirits look over their earthly benefactors, providing grace or granting petitions for their well-being.

For Neapolitans, the prospect of Purgatory was no picnic, as can be seen in the hundreds of sculptural terracotta scenes made by Neapolitan artisans throughout the early-modern period. In these fascinating, rather disquieting scenes, anguished souls are figured burning in the fires of purgatory as Christ’s crucifixion takes place on the hill of Golgotha in the background.

Emerging from the subterranean world, we reach the fourteenth-century monastery of Santa Chiara, itself founded on Roman baths. Dating back to the 13th century, the complex’s most impressive feature is its vibrant 17th century Rococo cloister: redesigned by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, 72 octagonal columns divide the space into avenues, each decorated with a series of brightly coloured majolica tiles depicting plants, flowers and scenes of pastoral life. Within the arcades that run along the four sides of the cloister meanwhile, beautiful frescoes depicting sacred narratives decorate the walls. The monastery of Santa Chiara and its cloister is an ideal retreat from the chaos of the surrounding city