Station of Neapolis

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The old town centre of Naples coincides with the area of the city founded by the Greeks at the beginning of the fifth century BC, a fact which is extremely well-known. Our knowledge of the history of the city in the oldest phase is the result of a series of excavations begun in the late nineteenth century during the urban redevelopment work designed to decontaminate the city after the cholera epidemic. These excavations were heavily conditioned by the nature of the building work. At the beginning of the 1970s, scientific exploration of the old city fo Naples began; extremely important work has been carried out recently with the systematic exploration of the areas where the new underground stations will be built, namely piazza Municipio, piazza Libero Bovio and piazza Nicola Amore. The excavations, carried out according to modern stratigraphic methods, have brought to light a magnificent porticoed building, probably the gymnasium, in the area of Piazza Nicola Amore and the fascinating evidence of the port area of Neapolis beneath the present-day Piazza Municipio. The coastal area of the city was marked from the second century BC onwards by a process of building development outside the city walls with the construction, in the area of present-day piazza Nicola Amore, of a porticoed building with a similar overlying building of imperial date; this building was part of a complex of buildings including a temple dating to the mid-first century AD. The end wall of the portico was covered in marble slabs with inscriptions of the names of the Isolympic games, set up in 2 AD in honour of the emperor Augustus. The monumental complex fell into ruin in the sixth century AD. The ancient port extended from the Church of S. Maria di Portosalvo to the eastern side of the castle of Maschio Angioino. Traces of imposing building work dating to the first century AD have been uncovered, linked to the construction of a jetty perpendicular to the coastline. The port began to shrink in size due to the gradual process of silting-up towards the end of the second century/start of the third century AD, as can be seen from the find of three wrecks. By the beginning of the fifth century AD, the silting-up process was completed and a gradual process of advancement of the coastline began.