The British Caving Association

Posted by Fulvio Sunday, Feb. 3, 2009

This wonderful adventure video, shot and produced by speleologist, Luca Cuttitta, takes you along on a typical exploration through tunnels, 2.000 year old Greek and even later Roman aqueducts and huge cisterns and caverns that snake in an incredible honeycomb beneath the city of Naples. The YouTube link is below. Our Webmaster, Fulvio Salvi, (NeandertalMan) the trim serious fellow with the glasses, as well as NUg explorers Zool and Cutter73 are featured in this fascinating video of a recent decent into the quarried and carved yellow volcanic tuf sandstone beneath the ancient city. Videographer, Luca (Ipogeo), makes an appearance in the very last scene. Luca is an engineer specializing in underwater and inter-infrastructure inspection videos and other cutting edge technology. Luca is also becoming a fine documentary producer as well.

What you will see includes the climbing and descent methods used to access this seemingly endless maze of chambers and passageways some 30 to 60 meters below the bustling city above. The narrow ledges you see the group walking upon are the sides of large early cisterns that are beneath huge buildings above that were built from the excavated tuf below centuries ago. Water was diverted through the narrow tunnels you will see the explorers squeezing through, from the ancient aqueducts to provide water to the cisterns for villas and palaces above. Notice the almost six-foot rounded tunnels the crew moves through and you can see the actual pick marks left by Greek slaves more than two thousand years ago. Also you will notice porcelain electrical insulators attached to the tops and sides of the larger squared-off passageways which carried both AC and DC electricity throughout huge quarried cavities and tunnels used in WWII as air raid shelters. The stairways you see are carved in negative from solid tuf and are typical of those hastily constructed by Mussolini's civilian defense groups who prepared the underground for use as shelters from allied bombing in the 1940's. This is a nicely done video by Luca that also shows what modern day visitors can see today. Hope you enjoy the video.

Video LINK

by Napoli Underground

LARRY RAY