Parthenope, Νεάπολις, Napoli
city · Campania, Italy
3 places to see, the best preserved and best known first.
Photo: Dominik Matus · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
necropolis · Campania
The catacombs lie on two levels, side by side rather than stacked, and both are unusually spacious, unlike the better-known catacombs of Rome, because the tuff was easy to cut and strong enough to stand (the operator).
Photo: http://www.everyfoto.com · CC BY 3.0 · Commons
forum · Campania
The excavation lies under the Gothic church and its cloister, where Neapolis had its forum, the successor of the Greek agora (Scabec; en.wikipedia).
Photo: Mentnafunangann · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
necropolis · Campania
The visit starts in the crypt under the church's raised choir, which was once a corridor of the catacomb and is now a chapel with ten side altars, painted with stories of the martyrs by Bernardino Fera (it.wikipedia; the operator).
The best single visit is the excavation under San Lorenzo Maggiore, about 10 m below the church (Scabec). Excavation since 1976 has uncovered the macellum, the city’s market, with porticoes and shops around a courtyard that held a small round tholos, and a stretch of street about 60 m long onto which shops opened, one of them possibly the city treasury. The Greek foundations go back to the 4th century BC, with a complex of the 1st century AD built over them (it.wikipedia); part of the mosaic floor of a 6th-century basilica can still be seen under the church’s transept (it.wikipedia). A mudslide in the 5th century buried the market, which is why it survived (en.wikipedia).
A few minutes’ walk away, the Roman theatre lies inside the blocks between Via Anticaglia, Via San Paolo and Vico Giganti. Two massive arches on Via Anticaglia, now built into later houses, were its outer supports and can be seen from the street; inside, the seats held 5,000 to 6,000 people, and some still carry their marble facing. Nero made his singing debut in Naples, and his performances filled the theatre (it.wikipedia). Part of the theatre is the last stop of a tour of underground Naples (it.wikipedia), and Napoli Sotterranea lists it on its route (the operator), while the seating uncovered in a courtyard opens only on special occasions (it.wikipedia). On Piazza San Gaetano, two Corinthian columns of the Temple of the Dioscuri, rebuilt probably under Tiberius, stand in the façade of the church of San Paolo Maggiore (it.wikipedia).
Stretches of the city walls survive along their circuit. In Piazza Bellini they lie in an open excavation below the café tables: the ancient ground level was about 10 m lower, and the date of this stretch, 5th or 4th century BC, is disputed (it.wikipedia). These walls are Greek; the Romans refaced them in tougher stone, and Valentinian III is said to have extended them towards the port around AD 440, as an inscription found in 1747 records (it.wikipedia).
North of the centre, in the Sanità district, the Catacombs of San Gennaro are the largest Christian catacomb complex in southern Italy, on two levels with much roomier passages than the catacombs of Rome (en.wikipedia). They grew from a family tomb of the 2nd–3rd century and hold the oldest known portrait of San Gennaro, from the 5th century, a basilica carved out of the tuff, and 5th-century mosaic portraits of bishops in the Crypt of the Bishops (it.wikipedia). The ticket also covers the Catacombs of San Gaudioso under the church of Santa Maria della Sanità (the operator), a 4th–5th-century cemetery of which only a small part remains, with 5th–6th century frescoes and a 6th-century mosaic over the saint’s tomb, overlaid by grim 17th-century burials (en.wikipedia).
Farther out, at Piedigrotta, the Crypta Neapolitana is a Roman road tunnel more than 700 m long, built around 37 BC for Agrippa by the architect Lucius Cocceius Auctus to take the road to Pozzuoli through the hill. Its eastern entrance is in the Parco Vergiliano, next to a Roman burial vault traditionally called Virgil’s tomb (en.wikipedia). The brick arches of a Roman bridge, found in 2000 while the Salvator Rosa metro station was being built, stands restored in the park beside the station (it.wikipedia). Remains of Lucullus’s villa survive in the cellars of Castel dell’Ovo, where Roman columns still stand in the “hall of columns” (en.wikipedia), and archaeological finds have been worked into the Municipio station of metro Line 1 (the catacombs’ operator).
If you are in Naples, yes. Give it a day, but do not expect Pompeii: no Roman town survives above ground, and the pleasure lies in finding the ancient city under the modern one. The core is compact. The theatre and the Dioscuri columns are within about 250 m of San Lorenzo, the walls in Piazza Bellini about half a kilometre away, and the catacombs 1.3 to 1.7 km north. If you only have a morning, take San Lorenzo, which shows a stretch of Roman street with its shops, and the San Gennaro catacombs.
Things to know before you go: San Lorenzo, the catacombs and the underground tour each charge their own ticket, the catacombs can only be seen on a booked guided tour and are shut on Wednesdays, and the Crypta Neapolitana and Virgil’s tomb are about 4 km west of the centre, in a park that closes on Tuesdays and by early afternoon on most other days. Napoli Sotterranea’s route mixes the theatre with the remains of the Greek and Roman aqueduct, cisterns and Second World War air-raid shelters, so it is a general tour of underground Naples rather than a Roman one (the operator).
Naples is best explored on foot and by metro. The excavations are entered from the San Lorenzo Maggiore complex at Piazza San Gaetano 316; Napoli Sotterranea starts on the same square, at Piazza San Gaetano 69, next to San Paolo Maggiore. The San Gennaro catacombs are entered beside the Basilica del Buon Consiglio at Via Capodimonte 13, and San Gaudioso at Via Sanità 123 (the operators). The Parco Vergiliano is at Salita della Grotta 20 (Ministry of Culture), and the Roman bridge is beside the Salvator Rosa metro station.
San Lorenzo Maggiore is open daily 09.30–17.30; a ticket is €9, €7 for over-65s, teachers and university students, €6 under 18, free under 6, and a guide costs €2 more (laneapolissotterrata.it, read 18 October 2026). The catacombs run guided tours on the hour from 10.00 to 17.00, booking is compulsory, and they close on Wednesdays and 25 December; one ticket for both catacombs was €13, €9 for students and over-65s, €6 under 18, on the operator’s tariff as last readable in May 2024. Napoli Sotterranea’s tours leave on the hour from 10.00 to 18.00 in Italian and English; its own pages give no price. The Parco Vergiliano is free, open Thursday to Monday 08.45–14.45 and Wednesday 14.00–19.00, and closed on Tuesdays (Ministry of Culture). Hours and prices change, so check them before you go.
Before you go
Hours and prices checked 18 October 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.
Naples began as a Greek foundation. Merchants from Cumae founded a trading post called Parthenope here in the 8th century BC, and at the end of the 6th century BC Greek settlers founded the new city, Neapolis, beside it (fr.wikipedia; Pleiades). The city was laid out on a grid of streets, with its agora where Piazza San Gaetano is now (en.wikipedia, History of Naples).
Neapolis came under Rome in 326 BC, when a Roman army besieged it for a year until it surrendered. Rome left it wide autonomy and its Greek language and customs under a treaty, the foedus Neapolitanum. Neapolis later backed the losing side twice, Marius against Sulla in 82 BC, when Sulla’s armies devastated it, and Pompey against Caesar, and lost ground to Puteoli as a port. Under Augustus it recovered as a centre of Greek culture, and in AD 2 he founded games there on the model of Olympia. Rich Romans lined the coast with villas, Lucullus among them; Rome built roads and tunnels to Pozzuoli, enlarged the port, and added baths and aqueducts. The earthquakes of 62 and 64 and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 brought further setbacks (en.wikipedia, History of Naples). Virgil asked for his ashes to be brought back to his villa outside Naples when he died in 19 BC (en.wikipedia, Virgil’s tomb).
The catacombs grew from a Roman family tomb of the 2nd–3rd century into Christian cemeteries; San Gennaro, martyred in 305, was brought to the catacomb that took his name, and Neapolitan bishops were buried there until the 11th century (en.wikipedia, it.wikipedia). The last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was exiled to Lucullus’s former villa, by then a fortress, after he was deposed in 476 (en.wikipedia). In the Gothic War Belisarius took the city in 536 by sending troops through its aqueduct, and after the Lombard invasions Naples remained loyal to the Eastern Roman Empire (en.wikipedia, History of Naples).
Photo: Armando Mancini · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Commons
Photo: Phyrexian · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
9 km · city · Campania
Excavation has uncovered about 4 to 4.5 hectares of a town of roughly 20, so this is a compact site: four fully excavated blocks of houses and shops (insulae III to VI) and parts of others, between excavated streets, with the rest of ancient Herculaneum, including most of its forum and its temples, still under modern Ercolano (it.wikipedia, fr.wikipedia).
12 km · city · Campania
The Flavian Amphitheatre is the set piece: only the Colosseum and the amphitheatre of Capua are larger.
Straight-line distances.
Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.
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