Placido Troyli, the 18th-century Neapolitan Abbot, took great pride in Naples’s water system. In a multi-volume history of the city, he wrote the city’s plumbing was “something that would be difficult to find in other cities of the world, with each large building having its own reservoir and each apartment the convenience of drawing water both night and day from within”. He romanticized the underground cisterns and channels, writing about the water’s health and “ineffable taste”.

In reality, the system was an impressive undertaking for the ancient world. Still, as the city’s population grew, the underground couldn’t keep up—paving the way for a deadly cholera outbreak in 1884.

As the epidemic took hold in the city, it became clear that the city would need a new way to bring water to its residents.

The 170-kilometer geological web, which had transported water over centuries of crises, was suddenly obsolete.

The city built new systems, and as the water emptied, the ancient underground became a dumping ground for Neapolitan residents. The wells were elevated trashcans filled with items from small parcels to entire pieces of furniture. The tunnel’s history was buried, and momentarily, forgotten about.

As WWII broke out, though, the old tunnels were reawakened as a bomb shelter. Seven hundred tons of trash was removed from the underground system before it was filled with cots and other essentials. The wells were widened to accommodate spiral staircases, and the caves were even fitted with modern amenities like showers.

However, as the war ended and the citizens slowly returned to their homes or new shelters, the underground became neglected, once again. Its function had expired, and history seemed to repeat itself as it became a 20th-century dumpster.

By 1979, the underground could no longer be ignored. A carpenter was throwing out sawdust down an old well when he looked into the pit with a paper torch. Then, he accidentally dropped the flame. It triggered a fire that burnt beneath the city, releasing toxic fumes into the sky, and could not be stopped without finding a way into the underground.

Michele Quaranta, who would later found the Libera Associazione Escursionisti Sottosuolo (LAES, or Free Association of Underground Explorers in English) with his brother in 1988, pointed the firefighters to a 1940’s-era stairwell that allowed them to extinguish the flames and rediscover a lost history. In the late 80s, the brothers opened that history to the public, beginning guided tours into the tuffaceous caverns, and again reviving the space, this time into a local attraction.

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