La Napoli sotterranea. Napoli “cava” e Napoli archeologica: forme dello spazio sotto la città.

The millenary construction of Naples produced, in the dialectic with a singular orography, a remarkable “double” condition: the mythic hypogeum spatiality and the city built above it. Moreover, in Naples there are two different spatial qualities related to this condition: the first one is related to “functional” spaces, excavated in the tuff bank for transportation of commodities, people, water and for quarrying; the second one concerning the relationship between archaeological level of the city and the quota of the current city. Napoli sotterranea – the “underground Naples” – is rich and articulated, having had different origin and uses: quarries, underground tombs, cisterns, tunnels, catacombs and a network of galleries more than one million of square metres broad that intercepted in different ways the life of the city inhabitants, first being the system for the water supply in the ancient age up to raid aid shelters during the second world war. But, as said, there is another spatial condition under the city in Naples, that is the archaeological level of the city. In fact, on one hand, the entire Greek-roman city influenced the overlaying urban fabric, today still readable and correspondent to the ancient level below; on the other hand, in a more significant way, the ancient ruins of the classical monuments often became, through foundation, appearance, incorporation, part of the new city as churches, monuments or houses, stratified over time. All these spaces, with their singular qualities, are today occasions for projects that, never as in this case, must be a wise project, able to read the ancient and produce the new.