Places: Galleria Borbonica

Looking back on a tour of an underground tunnel in Naples, Italy

In May, my wife and I went abroad for the first time in several years, making a return visit to Italy.

In March 2017, Jill and I spent four days in Venice and Burano, a follow up to a trip the year before that took us to Paris and Switzerland. At that point, with Emma in college and the other kids on their own, we finally were taking advantage of the opportunity to travel. And we enjoyed Italy so much that we pledged to go back.

Then life, as it always does, intervened. We moved. Jill’s promotion meant she had much greater responsibilities. Two of our children got married. Two grandchildren were born. And there was this thing called a global pandemic, which gashed my business.

It took us seven years, but in May, we took a nine-day trip to the Amalfi Coast, Rome, and Naples. As usual, I took hundreds of photos, culled through to get the ones I liked, and…

There they sat — mostly unedited and taunting me — on my computer.

I’m not sure why I didn’t get to the edits until recently, other than the fact I was intimidated by the sheer volume and, as always, questioning whether my take on some of the most photographed places in the world was worthwhile. My usual approach is to not think too much and edit a majority of what I take as I go along so I avoid getting backed up. I hate being taunted by unedited photos.

But this journey was different. Primarily, it was that Jill gave me the task of planning the entire trip (daunting but fun). I scheduled a mix of tours, catching the things you “have” to see (Vatican City, Pompeii, the Colosseum, Positano, etc.) as well a few out of the way things. I tried to build in flexibility so we wouldn’t come home exhausted.

And we didn’t. Our vacation — a true vacation (!) with a lot of great photo opportunities — was lovely, an experience that helped wipe out those isolated days of the pandemic and the uneasy feeling I had for a long time that we might not get to travel abroad again.

I went back and looked at the photos, edited a few for a “52 Weeks” installment that summed up the summer, and went onto other things. But over the past several weeks, I’ve taken the time to start editing sections of our journey.

52 Weeks — #35

Trying to distract my mind from the presidential election, as well as other life and work events that have left me distracted, I decided to post this Visual Story today, focusing on one of the “out of the way” sights we visited rather than one of the expected.

So, I bring you inside Galleria Borbonica, a tunnel in Naples that is more than 130 feet below the ground.

Inside the Bourbon Tunnel

Known as the Bourbon Tunnel (not after the liquor), it was created in the 19^th century by Ferdinand II Bourbon, aka the then-King of Naples.

Bourbon, the King of the Two Sicilies from 1830 to 1859, was an absolute monarch during a time of great political unrest. From 1847 to 1849, the people of Naples participated in three revolutions against him. Bourbon decided to build a tunnel 12 meters wide (about 39 feet) and 12 meters high through the volcanic rock under the Naples streets so he could flee by carriage if necessary.

The tunnel was never completed. Ferdinand survived an assassination attempt in 1856, but died three years later. The Kingdom of Naples fell following his death and Italy was unified in 1861, bringing construction to a halt.

During World War II, the tunnel was used as a shelter as Naples was bombed. According to our tour guide, 5,000 to 10,000 people lived in the tunnel under terrible conditions. Debris, including antique cars and items used by the temporary residents, remains. At the end of the tour is a discarded monument that was made for Aurelio Padovani, an early leader of the Fascist movement. The monument was destroyed after the war ended and left in the tunnel.

The tour is one of several you can take of the underground tunnels in Naples, including the Napoli Sotterranea, which takes you to the Roman Theater and Greek-Roman aqueduct. But the tour guides ask you to not use a flash, which from a photography standpoint, presented a challenge.

All of the photos here were shot with an ISO of between 6,400 and 12,800 with a Canon R5 and I used noise reduction to help cleanup the images. It was, without question, the toughest shoot of a memorable trip.

Are you interested in more visual stories from Italy and other places I’ve visited? If so, let me know in the comments.