Ipogeo dei cristallini

Twelve metres below the Rione Sanità, four Hellenistic tombs bear witness to the Greek Naples of the 4th century BC: funerary chambers carved into the tuff, decorated with vivid frescoes, columns, sculptures and refined trompe l'œil effects. It all began in 1889, when Baron Giovanni di Donato ordered excavations in the garden of his palace — perhaps in search of a well, perhaps of building tuff. Instead of rock, his workers found silence: that of a necropolis buried for centuries beneath layers of alluvial debris, left intact as if time had forgotten about it. Today, descending those steps, one comes face to face with the Medusa painted by Greek artists, with cushions sculpted in hard stone for the deceased, with colours — red, blue, yellow — that after 2,400 years have not stopped speaking.