As our bespectacled guide’s monotone drone (in proficient but uninspired textbook English) encouraged the minds of his captive audience to wander, my eyes floated around the room we were standing in. Upon realizing my mistake in booking the wrong tour, I had at first tried to bumble apologies and explanations into Frank’s ear. Frank patiently ignored me until I trailed off, and I begrudgingly had to accept my mistake and try to get my money’s worth. The guide had ignored my rudeness. I came to realize later he was probably used to his tourists doing this at the beginning of the tour.
There are 2 different tours that run out of the same plaza, and, bless them, they are named Napoli Sotterranea and Neapolis Sotterrata. The first is the one I wanted to book, the latter is what we actually got. As I mentioned at the end of the previous post, I had expected to descend into the underbelly of the city to see glowing 4th century Greek water filled cisterns, remains of a Roman aqueduct, a little museum of Naples’s more recent history and traditions, and a peak into the remains of a Roman theater that Nero himself had performed at. The last was actually tucked under the floorboards of a modern house. Instead, we were standing in a small cool 13th century chapter house of the monastery San Lorenzo Maggiore, very much above ground.
Built in the early 1200s as a space for monks to gather to discuss monastery business, it was smaller than other chapter houses I had seen. A narrow rectangle some 60ft by 40, the arched ceiling was supported by 2 somber granite columns (remains of the mysterious St. Augustine at the Mint, apparently a structure that had stood there earlier, but of which there is only mention but no explanation on several websites I searched). Cheerful ochra colored bricks laced the ceiling. In the triangles between the bricks, daintily painted frescoes depicting various allegorical and biblical figures, notable disciples of St. Francis of Assisi, along with theological, royal and scientific bigwigs of the time. The ceiling, only about 25 ft high, was low enough that all the little flowers, cherubs, and various symbols were easily discernible. In the center, a small depiction of the Virgin Mary hovers over the date 1608, the year the frescoes were completed. If left alone, I could have spent some amount of time in this room, wandering around with my head tilted back. On the back wall fresco portraits of dour Franciscan notables stare down at visitors. Among them figure saints, popes and cardinals, as well as missionaries and leaders of the Poor Clares, the first female Franciscan order.
Having run out of things to mumble about this room, or captor led us to the next one. The Sala Sisto V was built to impress, but honestly, I have to say that it failed to do so. Almost 2.5 times longer than the chapter house, it’s vaulted ceiling was lavishly but somberly decorated with depictions of the seven main virtues, faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence, as well as scenes from various provinces of the kingdom of Naples. Painted in the 17th century by Luigi Rodriguez, a local artist of Spanish extraction. In contrast, the walls were starkly white. During the many years where the room’s primary use had been as the meeting place for the Neapolitan Parliament, they were hung with rich tapestries. By comparison to the Chapter House, this room had a decidedly gloomy air… as an afterthought now though, I suspect that the frescoes really just needed a good clean, and it would have brightened the whole place up considerably.
A lot of Neapolitan history happened here, and if I had the time and inclination I suppose I could have delved into acts of the Neapolitan Parliament, but really, I don’t have either. The most noted thing I could find was that in this room Alfonso V of Aragon, AKA the Magnanimous, AKA Alfonso I of Naples, against the wishes of the pope, magnanimously bestowed upon Naples in the mid 1400s their next monarch, naming as his heir his natural son Ferdinand I (AKA Ferrante I, AKA total batshit crazy psychopath). A bastard in both birth and actions, his deeds in his 36 year reign included taxidermying his enemies, dressing them in their finest clothes and displaying them to his dinner guests. See my post about Castel Nuovo if you haven’t already read it for more.
Our guide stuttered awkwardly to a halt. Having brought our group of 15 or so lost sheep to the end of the long Sala Sisto V, he now motioned for us to about face and herded us back into the courtyard. Now that I think about it, I do find it rather odd that we didn’t actually go into the main church, (I looked at pictures later. It is starkly bare of decoration, impressive in the French gothic style, but I’m not heartbroken I didn’t see it first hand), but anyway, alonz-y!
At this point I was wondering if this weird little tour was over, and if I had time to go and find the actual tour I had wanted to go on, and then our anemic shepherd indicated a staircase set in the corner of the cloister, a dark, narrow one leading underground. Perhaps we would see the cisterns after all?
We descended about 35 feet and suddenly found ourselves emerging onto an ancient Roman street, one that had last seen daylight over 1500 years ago. The poor lighting made it into a night-time scene, perhaps with a full moon. Our guide, despite still looking like he needed several large steak dinners, became slightly more animated, and we became a whole lot more interested. We were standing in the only large-scale Greco-Roman excavation in Napoli’s downtown area, a painstaking project that took over 25 years to uncover what we can see today. It didn’t seem like excavations were on-going, and i couldn’t find anything to say to the contrary, but what they had revealed already was remarkable.
For you see, San Lorenzo Maggiore sits smack on top of the heart of ancient Naples. Original settlement of the area by Greek sailors in the 9th century BC was actually on the small island of Megaride, on which the Castel dell’Ovo now sits (and has sat since 6th century BC), and was called Parthenope. The population soon outgrew the small island and spread to the mainland, and the city center was established on the hill of Pizzofalcone, overlooking the sea (not too far from the Spanish Quarter). It was renamed Neápolis around 600BC, and grew to be one of the most important cities of Magna Graecia, or Greater Greece, which encompassed all the Greek colonies on the Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily. Some time around then, the center of the city moved from Pizzofalcone to where we now stood. Remarkably, when the Romans took it in 326BC, they viewed Neápolis as a paragon of Hellenistic culture, and it retained its Greek language and traditions, even while it incorporated Roman innovations such as public baths and aqueducts.
Frank and I and much of the rest of the tour group now hung onto every halting word that spilled out of our guide’s mouth. He informed us that before us was the Maccellum of Naples, the Roman market place that had been buried in a mudslide in the 5th century AD. He reassured us that as far as it’s known no lives were lost in the event. Rather than dig it out, contemporary Neopolitans had decided to build over it instead, and paleo-christian (early) church had been constructed, one that in turn had been replaced time and again until the current iteration of San Lorenzo. The macellum itself had been built upon the Greek agora, built between the 5th & 4th century BC.
The agora, literally meaning “the place of assembly” in Ancient Greek, was the very center of any Hellenic city. This was only for free-born citizens (not women, naturally), who came to enjoy athletic events, do business, take part in religious rituals, muster for military duty, participate in political events and get the latest gossip & news. Agoras eventually evolved to also serve as marketplaces. As Neápolis grew and changed and became more Roman, so did the agora morph into the macellum.
The upper floor of the macellum would actually stand at current street level on Via Tribunali, and wasn’t completely buried in the mudslide, and bits and pieces of it were used in nearby construction. The somber granite columns I mentioned before that supported the ceiling of the chapter house, themselves reused from an older church, were topped by white marble capitals, which were likely pilfered from the ruined market. After pausing to look over the old city bank (presumably, as there were iron bars on the windows), we strolled upon the ancient street as our guide explained about the 9 little tabernae (shops) that had lined the edges of a market, and how among them was a bakery (with an oven) and a shop that dyed fabrics or was a laundry (big tubs).
As we traversed the street, it was pointed out to us that while most of the paving stones were black, they were inter-spaced pretty regularly with white ones. This did not seem particularly interesting to us at first, until the guide explained that on any night that wasn’t completely moonless, these white rocks would have practically glowed. Any pedestrian finding his way along the road after dark would have used these stones as a guide. As the street ran into a wall of tuff, we made an abrupt right turn and we found ourselves inside the market itself, with its stalls and stone counters.
In the center of the market are the remains of the tholos, a circular columned structure that had graced pretty much all Roman markets anywhere. One explanation I found said fish were sold here, another site told me it’s where merchants would make small offerings to gods for a profitable day. Finding definitive facts about Naples can be quite frustrating some times, let me tell ya. The one thing that I have concluded though, having done a bit of research, is that our guide was rather shite. Exhibit A, half of the circular roof of the tholos is exposed to the open air, viewable from above in a fenced of area of the cloister we had been shuffled through twice. At no point of the tour did our soggy cracker of a guide tell us about it.
We then came to a spot that I guess you could describe as a layer cake, where we could observe the building styles of 3 separate civilizations. Looking down, we could see the remains of a Greek cistern, built Lego style with large cut stones, but with no mortar. They were fitted tightly enough to be able to hold water. These date possibly back to about 150BC. So we got to see a Greek cistern after all, I suppose. Above the cistern rise much smaller bricks, arranged in a cross hatch pattern much the same as in Herculaneum and Pompeii. This was a typical Roman building style dating from the 1st century. It is estimated that most of the ruins here date from then and into the 2nd AD. You see, the earthquakes that had shaken Pompeii and Herculaneum in 62 & 64AD had done some considerable damage in Naples as well, and this was reconstruction. And again, above that, we could see the closed off windows an early Christian church, their arches still fully delineated, but where once light had spilled into the ancient sanctuary, was now blocked up with brick and mortar.
I’m sure other pertinent facts were shared by the moist saltine, but as much as I struggle I cannot recall a single one. Our tour finally stuttered to an end. We returned to the surface and made our way back to the square, still blissfully unaware of the visible tholos, or that apparently there is an excellent museum in this very complex. 3 entire floors dedicated to the history of the area around San Lorenzo. The first floor is dedicated to the scavi we have just seen, with marbles and ceramics that had been recovered from the old market. There’s a table-top model of the old city center and a detailed explanation of the Neapolis’s history. The 2nd floor is dedicated to Magna Grecia and the Roman Empire. On the 3rd floor you can learn about the post-Roman era, and how the site of San Lorenzo developed into a 6th century paleo-Christian monastic community, then a medieval town-hall, and then into the complex that we see today. I don’t know about you, but this is something I would have liked to see… Our guide, quite bluntly, really sucked at the up-sell.
In conclusion, I would say seeing the ruins was worth the 9 euros a person it cost, but hope for a better guide if you go. If, in a post-Covid world, we make it back to Naples, we will definitely return to check out the museum.
I shall mention one last thing before I release my own captive audience. As we stepped back out into the piazza in front of San Lorenzo Maggiore, it’s 4 story austere belltower cast it’s shadow upon us. In 1647, during the Fisherman’s Revolt (a short-lived and ill-planned action against the ruling Spanish Habsburgs that got zero results), the monastery was captured by the rebels and it’s belltower was used as an artillery position.
And so we left San Lorenzo and the old city center behind us, and made our way back to “our” part of town, where another underground tour awaited us. We never did make it to Napoli Sotterranea… that will have to wait until our next visit to Naples as well.
***Once again, I must say that I can not definitively say that what I wrote here was at all accurate. Finding stuff in English about San Lorenzo Maggiore that had more than “this is a very historical church” was very difficult. My apologies for anything that is incorrect.
Appendix A:
I couldn’t find precisely why Alfonso was called the Magnanimous. He waged war a lot, but perhaps he was gracious in victory. He was a great patron of the arts, and ended his days completely enamored with a mistress some 40 years younger than him. He hadn’t managed to have any legitimate children, and so chose Ferdinand to keep Naples in the family.
Appendix B:
Apparently attempts were made to liven up the interior of the basilica San Lorenzo. In the 16th century it was kitted out with heavy Baroque decor, but it was removed in the late 19th & 20th century, (with a few exceptions), returning the church to its former austere glory.
Do SvidANIA 