Following WWII a building boom raced across the verdant hills above Naples like wildfire. Speculators with lots of money ran roughshod over a city government besieged with restructuring and organizing City regulatory and permitting offices following heavy bombing and other trials of WWII. Multi-story apartment buildings on long spindly concrete pilings of uncertain strength began to rise above the bucolic valleys and hillsides that ring the lower old city center. Something had to be done to get control of potentially sub-standard unapproved construction. In 1967 an extraordinary task force was formed to pull together experts in all fields of surveying, topography, earth core sampling of the subsoil, and an unprecedented attempt to locate and identify the undulating topsoil depths and location and tops of the solid tuff sandstone strata which run beneath the geothermal regions beneath Naples and surrounding area. The data gathered would be used to formulate recommendations for zoning, construction, and permitting in many areas to bring order and legal control to any future building.
This was no mean task, and to further complicate matters, the tuff sandstone strata are honeycombed with hundreds and hundreds of gigantic manmade cavities where the durable sandstone had been quarried and brought to the surface to build palaces, villas and other buildings over the centuries. Additionally other voids included railroad tunnels, ancient Greek and Roman aqueducts and water reservoirs, long tunnels from the city's pneumatic mail and message network from the early 1900's, as well as elaborate network of ancient as well as operating sewer lines, gas lines and other similar cavities.
The 1967 "Sottosuolo di Napoli" or Subsoil of Naples was published in a limited edition by the Commission that had guided the extraordinary project. It contains photos of the time as well as numerous charts, maps, diagrams, engineering studies and a census table of all the known cavities up to that time . . . many of which were used as air raid shelters in WWII.
With the permission of The City of Naples and a specific approval signed by the Mayor, Fulvio Salvi, founder of Napoli Underground was given permission to optically scan and digitally reproduce the entire 500 page work in its initial Italian form. And he did so … one page at a time, making this truly fascinating and informative work available to the world in well-done PDF form on the napoliunderground.org web site.
NUg associate and friend, Jeff Matthews, a long time Naples resident, university professor, translator and all round good guy came forward with an offer to translate the book into an English language version. Matthews invited fellow American and NUg friend and translator, Larry Ray, to join in. Over the coming months we hope to complete the translating and pagination as translation and formatting into PDF format progresses.
PART ONE of "The Subsoil of Naples" is now online for you to bookmark and to check with for updates as translation progressed:
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NeandertalMan

As a follow-on the digitizing of the rare and important 1967 "Subsoil of Naples" 500-page commissioned study into searchable PDF format in both Italian and the English translation which is in work, napoliunderground.org has now completed the scanning of the atlas of eight huge and very detailed maps which are available online. The eight maps include a 1) Central technical geological coastal map of the Naples shoreline, 2) Another with the isopach strata lines overlaid, 3) Zone map indicating with colored dots location of cavities beneath the city and surrounding area, 4) Water table levels , 5) Water table locations in the urban center, 6) Geotechnical overview map, 7) Geotechnical zone map, 8) Geologic strata overview map

While the keys to the maps are in Italian, they nonetheless offer a breathtaking overview of the honeycomb of giant cavities left when yellow tuff sandstone was mined and used for major building construction centuries ago. Specific geologic maps of the whole geothermal area present a wonderful overview.  As we move ahead with the English translation of "Subsoil of Naples" we plan to insert clickable links to the Atlas maps to expand use and understanding of this mind-boggling study of the complex subsoil in this geothermal area created by eons of major volcanic eruptions.

Larry Ray

Online Gallery of Atlas maps

Downloadable Zip of hi-resolution maps - "Il sottosuolo di Napoli – Atlante"

English Translation of "Subsoil of Naples"

by Napoli Underground

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NeandertalMan

Napolunderground is most happy to announce that translation into English of all nine chapters of the rare "Subsoil of Naples" is complete and posted in PDF form on our web site. The English version contains all the many photographs, maps in the original and we have added a clickable link to our up-to-date database with information and many survey photos of all known cavities beneath Naples and environs.
The first part is rather tedious as the study Commission lays out in detail the varied areas of study presented. The table of contents on page 8 provides page numbers for specific chapters, and a good example is Chapter nine with jaw-dropping photos and descriptions of the subsoil wash-outs that swallow up whole streets and even buildings!

SUBSOIL OF NAPLES PDF (12 MB)

by Napoli Underground

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NeandertalMan