Layers of Time in Naples

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Walls of ancient Greeks

Naples' greatness is still seen in the layers of history that lie in cross-section, her "stratification" as our guide to the Catacombs, Enzo, called it. The obvious example is Pompeii, buried in a snapshot of time by Vesuvius in 79 AD, and now after centuries of painstaking labor a city eternally set in the 1st c. Roman Empire. Near our apartment, walls of the ancient Greeks lay bared to the sky, alongside Roman roads still in use that border the site of the Roman forum now covered by gothic and Baroque churches.

Catacombs of San Gennaro

But one can also descend into the Catacombs to feel the air of pagan Naples, perhaps the Naples that the mythical siren Parthenope found when she was washed ashore after being rejected by Ulysses. The volcanic stone tuff (tufo) has been quarried from beneath Naples ever since, to build the ancient city. Some of the underground caverns became catacombs.

Wealthy family buried 4-5th c.

We walked there under esplanades of sooty, once wealthy villas, avoiding garbage mingled with rainwater underfoot as Italian drivers splashing by narrowly avoided us. Next to a grandiose pastiche of St. Peter's in Rome, above the poorer neighborhood of Sanita, we found the 5th c San Gennaro Extramoenia church, built on the Catacombs of San Gennaro. Today they are prominently advertised with a well-presented guided tour area, courtesy the fund-raising and efforts of the local association. Enzo, our guide, urged us on with almost religious intensity in his passion for the mission of preserving Napoli's stratification, and for his association which recruits locally and has obtained permission from the Vatican to preserve and present these most important catacombs of southern Italy.

Catacomb's Three Naves correspond to Naples' Greco-Roman streets

Beneath the terrace of the church one descends to the clearly designed "negative architecture"--that is, the quarried tuff left caverns carved into arches, vaults and divided naves. Chambers have shelves to receive the corpses of the moderately well off (in fetal position--as we arrive, so we leave the earth) 2 or 3 to a shelf. On the ground were cavities for the poor. For the rich the arcasoleum, an arch before a wall mosaic or fresco over the trough which received each member of the family in turn.

5th c. altar, 9th c. side chapels

It was a place of celebration--an actual 5th c church with frescoes, a very public and beloved place to connect between the worlds, this liminal space before eternal life. Golden lights traced the well defined space, but in ages past, openings to the sky provided light. The porous tuff drew away smells.

Once a Greco-Roman road, Via Tribunali today

Further in was the holy of holies--once the grave of San Gennaro. Surrounding it is a clearly defined cathedral, for the arrival of the martyr's body had made this a place of pilgrimage. Even today it is a place of worship and, sometimes, weddings. We were moving underground to the other end of the hill. Under this end were the original chambers of the prominent pagan family said to have donated, or shared, the catacombs in the 2nd-3rd c. BC. Further south was a true church, contiguous with the complex, its front columns from 3-4th c, its side columns from the 9th c. Exiting the building you see it has a beautiful Renaissance facade. A little further south is a hospital, which had moved its patients into the catacombs during WWII. Women gave birth where the dead had departed, crossing paths.

Roman shops below San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo Maggiore is another church where layers are peeled away. We walked there on one of the Greco-Roman roads, Via Tribunali, in the discouraging rain. Below was the Greek Agora, but it is the later Roman Forum where you can walk along the still visible shops with their Roman arches in brick, and along the covered market where shop counters remain, while further there are mosaics and painted walls of another building. The Romans, we learned later, used a diamond shaped placement for their bricks, because they learned that earthquakes sheer away on the diagonal.

Sisto V Hall in San Lorenzo

Above the Roman forum is a hall from the reign of the Swabian kings (13th c) with columns and gothic arches, leading into an elegant Renaissance hall with frescoed vaults used by Naples' Parliament from 1442. The Sisto V hall was also the friars' refectory, its frescoes dating to the beginning of 17th c.

The upper stories house a museum, with a model of the Roman and Greek buildings as they lie beneath several churches here, one of which is San Paolo Maggiore whose opulent marble inlay stands over the Greek Temple to Castor and Pollux--the original Greco-Roman columns ensconced in the Baroque facade. Like so much Baroque imagery, filled with violence--the conversion of St. Paul entailed the deaths of two horses, while elsewhere a bull implores a man not to be sacrificed.

San Paolo today

Also in the museum are pottery and stone columns from antiquity, a carved crucifix, altar painting and statuary such as St. Michael tenderly slaying a dragon, himself covered in lion parts.

The Duomohttp://www.duomodinapoli.it/en/main.htm, Cathedral to San Gennaro, is many-layered. The enormous originally gothic church is now swathed in Baroque marble, but one gothic chapel dates back to the 14th c, exuberantly painted like a medieval tapestry come alive.

Gothic chapel in Duomo

But most striking is another side chapel which was the original 4th c. church with its baptistery--the oldest in the Western world--a rough stone basin in its brick floor. Above the font the newly baptised can raise his or her eyes to glittering 4th c. Byzantine mosaics, rare examples of classical naturalism.

4th c. baptistery, oldest in the West

Byzantine mosaics, 4th c.

Cloister of Santa Chiara

Santa Chiara, Angevin burial place for kings, is another example of stratification. Now she is nearly empty of decor, except for the scarred gothic sarcophagi of the Anjou kings, guarded by monks sipping coffee from plastic cups, and a more lavish chapel for Philip, idiot Bourbon prince, and his powerful father. We dropped centimes into the electric candle box for our prayers. Outside a noseless Sri Lankan mother sat day after day on the street, beseeching with trembling eyes. Pole thin black Africans beat drums. An ancient German shepherd stared with an imploring smile from the yard, otherwise filled with teenagers smooching and playing soccer (from the school facing). That is present day Naples.

Details of tiles

But below Santa Chiara are the archeological remains of Roman baths. And above the baths is the most sublime aspect of this old church: her fresh sunlit cloister of the Clarissan convent. The vaults are frescoed with colorful Biblical stories, half worn away, but the main delight is the majolica tiles covering the all surfaces throughout the garden, bright yellow, with paintings of old Naples.

WWII remnants beneath Naples

To come full circle, visit Napoli Sotterranea. It is another journey down into the tuff quarries, this time at the site of the Roman forum. You descend 100 ft or so below ground to tunnels first carved out by the Greeks for building materials and hypogeae (burial sites), then used by the Romans for aqueducts that served Naples from the 4th c BC to the 1880's, when an engineer improved upon them.

Forgotten in the 20th c, much of the 200km of tunnel became a huge garbage dump till WWII when they were paved over for bomb shelters. Artifacts from WWII remain--child's toys, beds. A few steps away are the remains of the Roman amphitheatre. For Naples was the Romans' first encounter with the Greek civilization. Layer upon layer.