Naples Underground: which of the four sites to visit

Under the city there are four routes open to the public, run by four different organisations, and they are not interchangeable. Napoli Sotterranea on piazza San Gaetano is the best known and the busiest: €18 online skip-the-line, a hundred and thirty-six steps, about an hour at a depth of forty metres plus twenty minutes in the remains of the Roman theatre swallowed up by the houses. The Galleria Borbonica asks €15 for the Standard Route, lasts an hour and states that the route suits visitors who suffer from claustrophobia. The LAES tunnels under the Quartieri Spagnoli cost €15 and do not admit children under 6. San Lorenzo Maggiore with the buried Neapolis is the cheapest, €9, and the only one where you walk in whenever you like between 9:30am and 5:30pm with no assigned slot. This page is here to help you choose one route or two, not four.

The four underground sites compared

The official prices are the ones we read on the operators’ own sites; our partners’ tour prices are verified regularly but can change.

Napoli Sotterranea, piazza San Gaetano: what you see in 90 minutes

You go down with a guide, in a group, at the scheduled departure time. A hundred and thirty-six steps take you forty metres down into the tuff cavities cut in Greek times in the 4th century BC, used as aqueduct cisterns for some twenty-three centuries and then as air-raid shelters during the Second World War. The floor is even, the spaces are wide and lit: the only narrow stretch is a tunnel walked with a candle towards the cistern that still holds water, and it is optional. If enclosed spaces are your problem, say so to the guide and wait for the group at the entrance.

The ticket also covers, at no extra cost, the remains of the Roman theatre in vico Cinquesanti: you step into a ground-floor flat, a bed is moved aside, a trapdoor opens. That is another twenty minutes and it is the part visitors remember most. The route then takes in the workshop with the seismic station, the greenhouse and the underground vegetable beds thirty-five metres down, and the war museum.

Two practical warnings. First: the association points out that the address entered on Google Maps leads to the wrong place, so search for piazza San Gaetano and the basilica of San Paolo Maggiore, not the name of the site. Second: booking is not compulsory below ten people, so the €18 online skip-the-line ticket is only worth it if you arrive in high season just before a departure. It is neither refundable nor changeable. For how the association is run, how the ticket desk is organised and what the website does not tell you, read the Napoli Sotterranea review.

Galleria Borbonica: four routes in one piece of underground

This is the tunnel commissioned by Ferdinand II and designed by Errico Alvino to link the Palazzo Reale to the military zone of via della Pace, never finished, later a wartime shelter and finally the city council’s impound depot: down there, alongside the Renaissance cisterns of the Bolla aqueduct, are vintage cars and motorbikes, fragments of statues, names scratched into the walls by the people who came down from piazza Carolina under the bombs.

The scheduled tours run on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. The Standard Route leaves at 10am, noon, 3pm and 5pm from two entrances: via Domenico Morelli 61, the pedestrian entrance of the Morelli car park, or vico del Grottone 4, a hundred metres from piazza del Plebiscito, with an eighteenth-century staircase. It costs €15, €10 for ages 6 to 18, for over-70s and for the uniformed services, €7 for visitors with disabilities, free up to age 5. From the via Morelli entrance, 60% of the route is passable in a wheelchair.

Via delle Memorie (€15, 1 h 15, at 11am and 4pm) starts from via Monte di Dio 14, in the octagonal courtyard of Palazzo Serra di Cassano, drops into the tuff quarries the palace itself was cut from and ends in the Morelli car park: fine to walk, but with stairs and therefore not accessible to everyone. The Adventure Route (€20, 1 h 25) is done with helmet and torch, squeezes through a short tunnel towards a fifteenth-century cistern and includes a raft crossing on the water table: from 10 years old, with ID required up to 15, and not advised for anyone with mobility problems or claustrophobia. Speleo Light (€15, 1 h 30) is the most selective: adults only, barred to anyone claustrophobic, to anyone over 100 kg and to anyone with even mild mobility problems. You come out dirty.

On the other days of the week you get in only on a private tour, arranged on request between 9am and 6pm. Booking is compulsory on every route. Our Galleria Borbonica review compares the four itineraries and explains which one is worth the €20.

LAES, the tunnels of the Quartieri Spagnoli

Run by the LAES association, this is the least trodden of the four. You meet in front of bar Gambrinus, on piazza Trieste e Trento; the actual entrance is at vico Sant’Anna di Palazzo 52. It lasts about an hour and costs €15 for adults from 13 upwards, €7 for children aged 7 to 12; children under 6 are not admitted and booking is required. Tours in Italian leave Monday to Friday at 10am, noon, 2pm and 4:30pm, on Saturdays and Sundays at 10am, 11am, noon, 2pm, 3pm, 4:30pm and 6pm; those in English every day at 10am, noon, 2pm and 4:30pm. It is the right choice if you have already done San Gaetano and want the piece of city that sits above: the Quartieri Spagnoli and the Maradona mural start three hundred metres further up.

San Lorenzo Maggiore and the buried Neapolis

The monumental complex of San Lorenzo Maggiore, at piazza San Gaetano 316, is the only one of the four that works like a normal museum: open every day from 9:30am to 5:30pm, full ticket €9, €7 for university students, teachers, over-65s and Artecard holders, €6 for under-18s, free under 6, €4 for school parties. Under the Gothic basilica lies a stretch of street from ancient Neapolis with its shops, the cryptoporticus and the macellum; above are the frescoed chapter house, the Sisto V hall and four floors of museum holding finds from the digs and the figures of the eighteenth-century nativity scene. The operator presents the itinerary as non-claustrophobic, and it is the simplest answer for anyone who wants to see the buried Neapolis without flights of steps and without timed slots.

What the day costs

By public transport

TIC 90-minute ticket (metro Line 1 or ANM bus)unicocampania.it

€1.80 per ride · €4.50 the ANM day pass

Napoli Sotterranea, official online skip-the-linenapolisotterranea.org

€18 adults · €15 students 11–24 · €10 children 5–10

Galleria Borbonica, Standard Routegalleriaborbonica.com

€15 · €10 ages 6 to 18, over-70s and uniformed services · €7 visitors with disabilities

San Lorenzo Maggiore and the buried Neapolislaneapolissotterrata.it

€9 · €7 university students and over-65s · €6 under-18s

Total per person, two underground sites in half a day

€36.60 with Napoli Sotterranea + Galleria Borbonica and two 90-minute tickets · 4 hours

 

With a tour

GetYourGuide 1 h

Naples: Naples Underground Entry Ticket and Guided Tour

★ 4.4 (25,482 reviews) ✓ Cancellation free

If you want to spend as little as possible, the pair to do is San Lorenzo Maggiore (€9, no time slots) plus the Galleria Borbonica Standard Route (€15): €24 all in, and neither of the two is the busiest route in the city.

Tickets, queues and bookings: how it really works

None of the four underground sites has a sold-out problem like the Cappella Sansevero. The problem is a different one and it is about timing: the Galleria Borbonica and its four routes live on four days a week and two or four departures a day, LAES on fixed departures, Napoli Sotterranea on the exact hour. If you do not book, the queue you stand in is the one at the San Gaetano ticket desk on high-season mornings and long weekends, when the cruise groups arrive all at once.

A ticket bought through a partner platform has two concrete advantages: you pay in advance and have the time written on the voucher, and if your plans change the cancellation terms are usually softer than the official skip-the-line, which is neither refundable nor changeable. The exact meeting point is always on the voucher: at San Gaetano the entrance is marked by white and blue flags.

For the Galleria Borbonica the comparison is on the same Standard Route, so the difference is only in the cancellation terms and the language of the guide.

For the Quartieri Spagnoli and San Lorenzo Maggiore, partner prices line up with the official ones, with the convenience of the audio guide already included in the case of San Lorenzo.

Two products stay out of these comparisons because they have no equivalent: the evening tour of Napoli Sotterranea after closing time, which climbs to €45 because the group is small and the site is shut to the public, and the Ipogeo dei Cristallini, a Greek necropolis under the Rione Sanità that can only be visited with a guide.

GetYourGuide 2 h

Naples: Naples Underground Exclusive After Hours Tour

★ 4.8 (6 reviews) ✓ Cancellation free

Tiqets 00:45

Ipogeo dei Cristallini: Guided Tour + Rione Sanità Audio Guide

★ 4.9 (43 reviews)

What to wear and what to expect

Below ground it is between 15 and 20 degrees in every season, so a sweatshirt is useful even in August. Closed shoes with a non-slip sole are necessary on every route: in places the tuff is damp. Pushchairs get in nowhere: with a small child use a sling or a carrier, or give it a miss. If you have mobility problems, the only sensible option is the Borbonica Standard Route from the via Morelli entrance, and it is worth phoning ahead.

Visits are always guided except at San Lorenzo Maggiore, where the guide is a paid extra. That means the pace is not yours: groups leave on time, latecomers wait for the next slot. Arrive ten minutes before the departure written on your voucher.

Two underground sites in half a day

The most efficient combination is not the obvious one. Napoli Sotterranea and San Lorenzo Maggiore sit on the same square and tell the same story about the same subsoil: doing them back to back is repetitive. Better to pair one route in the ancient centre with one in the Bourbon city.

A four-hour plan, on a Friday or at a weekend: the 10am departure of Napoli Sotterranea on piazza San Gaetano, Roman theatre included; you come out around 11:45am, walk down via dei Tribunali and take metro Line 1 from Dante to Municipio, or walk twenty-five minutes to piazza del Plebiscito; at 3pm, the Galleria Borbonica Standard Route from vico del Grottone. Lunch and half an hour at the Palazzo Reale and on the seafront fit neatly in between. With the €18 and €15 tickets and two 90-minute TIC tickets at €1.80 you are at €36.60 per person.

If budget matters more than variety, the pairing is San Lorenzo Maggiore at €9 in the morning and the Borbonica Standard at €15 in the afternoon: €24 all in, and neither of them is the busiest route in the city.

What else is nearby

On piazza San Gaetano you are at the densest point of the old centre: the Sansevero Chapel with the Veiled Christ is four hundred metres away, the Duomo with the Treasure of San Gennaro three hundred, and the MANN a kilometre uphill, where the mosaics and frescoes from Pompeii ended up. If the subsoil won you over and you want the Christian, cemetery version, the next step is the Catacombs of San Gennaro in the Rione Sanità, with the second catacomb of San Gaudioso and the Ipogeo dei Cristallini a few hundred metres away. For how to slot it all together without rushing, see things to do in Naples and the walking tours that set off from the ancient centre.

If you remember one thing from this page: Naples Underground is not one place, it is four places with four tickets, and the right choice depends on how well you tolerate enclosed spaces and how much time you have. With a free morning, the piazza San Gaetano route is still the one that gives you the most city for ninety minutes.