Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World's Great Metropolises; A Memoir of Urban Exploration

by Gates, Moses

  Among our guide’s other stories that I manage to semi-understand are ones about a pregnant woman giving birth on the stairs down to the air-raid shelter, about the damp air being used for the development of penicillin, and about how the toilets were right next to the bottom of the stairs. Why? Well, if you’re in imminent danger of having a bomb level your house, what’s the first way your body might react?

  We emerge out of a nondescript door into a nondescript alley, with a nondescript middle-aged Italian woman staring at us. These are the entrances to the underground world of Naples. Not manholes, not anything you’d ever guess. In Naples, not just for the underground but for everything, knowledge and access are gained through people and relationships, not through academic research or random poking around. While developing those relationships in one conversation is certainly not unheard-of (Steve managed to talk his way into a Greek and Roman excavation site beneath a church, for instance), they can often take lifetimes, if not generations.

  Luckily for us, there are a few organizations, institutions, and just quirky individuals (such as our aforementioned Indiana Jones impersonator) who give us a great look into the fascinating underground infrastructure of the city. We get to see old air-raid shelters, catacombs, crypts, aqueducts, archaeological sites, and even the tomb of San Gennaro legally—a great deal more than we got to see during our extralegal excursions.

  • • •

  I love Naples. I feel comfortable here. I think it’s the kind of city I could eventually even feel at home in. But I know I’ll never truly know the city. Not if I live here the rest of my life and magically become fluent in Italian tomorrow. It’s too deep.

  Some cities are shallow, some are deep. It’s not a value judgment, and it doesn’t have much of a bearing on how much I like a town. But it’s there. Paris is a shallow city. Despite not knowing French and having spent only a few weeks there, I can tell you I know Paris. Maybe not all the nooks and crannies, not all the shortcuts, but I know the city. New York is different. It’s deep, but in a very different way from how a city like Naples is deep. New York is almost defined by its transience. This is especially true of Manhattan. Even before colonization it was transient: the local Lenape Indians would set up shop in the summer, do some hunting, and then leave for the winter. More than any other city I know of, knowing New York is a choice: it’s all there if you want to put in the work, but it’s going to be a heck of a lot of work. And the work never ends. New York changes so fast that you’re constantly playing catch-up. Because of this, it’s actually the newcomer who knows the city best at any given moment; old-timers are always looking at it through the distorted lens of a city that’s no longer there.

  Naples has none of this history of transience. Well, it does, but only in one direction—out. Over the last 150 years or so, it’s been one of the main emigrant points of the world. You can find people of Neapolitan descent from Alaska straight through to Tierra del Fuego. But with a few small exceptions—West African street merchants, Australian hostel managers—this migration hasn’t been returned. As a result, the vast majority of its residents share a generations-long culture and understanding that goes exponentially beyond that of a more transient city.

  What makes this glaringly obvious for me is that I can’t pass. I’m one of those people that everyone always assumes is a local—at least before I open my mouth—anywhere where it’s plausible someone of my particular appearance might live. I’m not quite sure why this is, other than that I feel comfortable in cities and probably project that sense of comfort. I got asked for directions twice my first day in Paris. Not in Naples. Despite my feeling that same comfort, nobody ever mistakes me for anything but an outsider. Nobody even starts speaking Italian to me. It’s not tourist season, to the extent there even is one in Naples, and the way I’m dressed isn’t particularly out of place. But it’s obvious I’m standing out in some way. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in Italy, or even anywhere else in Europe for that matter. It’s not me. It’s the city.

  Steve and I catch a train to Rome, with Jim, Ashley, Gabe, and the Australians all going their respective ways. I leave feeling like we can’t really crack Naples. I’m frustrated but somewhat resigned. In some cities that feeling of frustration is much worse, because you know if you stayed a little longer, prepared a little better, took a few more chances, you could have had it. Not Naples. I think I could stay forever and not really get that much further. It’s just too deep.

  FIFTEEN

  Rome, January 2007

  Ancient Rome had a problem: a lot of people, even more animals, and no way to get rid of their poop. To cope with this problem, a rudimentary sewer system was dug around 600 BC, flowing out to the Tiber River. True to Roman form, it even came complete with its own goddess, Cloacina. The marshy area it ran through was drained by this system and would eventually become the Roman Forum.

  This sewer became known as the Cloaca Maxima, and a little research leads us to the location of its original outflow. A couple of Gypsies are camped out in front of it, obviously making it their home. After trying, and failing, to initiate a conversation, I turn to walk away, and hear some very rapid, very angry Italian being hurled at me by one of them. After repeated Non parlo italianos on my part, I hear, “OK you speak English? You have made a very big mistake!”

  I’m not quite sure of the big mistake I’ve made, but apparently I have gravely offended some sensibility of his in our brief exchange. I have no idea what to do. More important, I have no idea what he is going to do. Luckily, after a good deal more berating, he takes my apologies enough that I can walk away without fear of further offense. Well, here was another obstacle I’d put in our way. Instead of manholes and fences, now we have angry Gypsies to contend with.

  The next morning Steve and I try to talk our way in, armed with peace offerings of pastries and beer. The guy who yelled at me isn’t there, but his friend is. He doesn’t speak English, offering Russian as an alternative. I counter with Spanish. He and Steve settle on a mangled conversation in French, and a couple beers later we’re in. Imagine our disappointment when the tunnel ends in a brick wall after twenty feet.

  We head down the river to see if there are any other entrances. A bit farther is another outflow, close enough that it might lead to the Cloaca. This time the obstacles are different. The first is a heavy metal gate. The second is an obstacle one might associate with sewers: namely sewage. While the other outflow is kept fairly clean by the Gypsies, this one has no such caretakers. Flies are swarming all over us as we’re up to our ankles in muck, trying to pry open the gate. This time it takes a little elbow grease and a strong stomach instead of two beers and half-decent French to make it in.

  Once we’re in, it’s a little better: most of the sewage is caught on the gate at the entrance, and there’s only a trickle down the middle of the tunnel. The tunnel itself is huge and looks relatively new, constructed at least a millennium and a half after the fall of Rome. It begins to curve toward the direction of the entrance to the Cloaca, but stops at a massive concrete floodgate before very long.

  With the Cloaca this close, we have to go on. Luckily for us, there’s a ladder. Up the ladder, into the gatehouse, across a catwalk, and down another, much rustier ladder and we find ourselves in the sewers beneath the Capitoline Hill. These sewers make the first one look like the Sistine Chapel. We’re on a slippery catwalk maybe two feet wide right next to the bodily waste of millions. One wrong step and we will literally be up shit creek without a paddle.

  STORM DRAIN GATE, ROME.

  The deeper in we go, the more I worry. We’ve brought an air meter, which will tell us if the atmosphere ceases to be safe. But we’re not really worried about air; we’re worried about water. The catwalk is only a few inches higher than the effluence next to us. If it rises just a little, we’ll be swimming back out. And if it rises a lot . . . well, let’s just say I can think of a lot better ways to go
. Offering up a quick prayer to Cloacina, we press on.

  After a few hundred feet we come to an archway on the side of the tunnel leading to a smaller tunnel. It’s not the kind of tunnel you’d find in the drains of newer cities, a side pipe that’s obviously part of the system. It’s older—much older—and not made out of the same dull concrete that forms the walls of the tube we’re in. Instead it’s made out of brick—the same kind of long, flat bricks that we’ve seen in the ruins of the ancient Roman forums.

  It also doesn’t lead directly to the catwalk, instead opening a few feet above. We crawl up and in and start down the tunnel. There’s no sewage, just a muddy floor, and after a few hundred feet we find out why: it dead-ends in a complex suite of brick arched chambers. We are directly under the oldest part of the city. Could this be a remnant of the Cloaca?

  After exploring this strange offshoot, we continue down the original tunnel. A little farther and the catwalk ends at a split. The right fork has no catwalk, and the left fork has a six-foot gap until it picks back up. Jumping it is out of the question, but we’re both heavily invested in our quest for the Cloaca.

  “You think maybe we can wade this?” I ask Steve, trying not to think of the diseases that must be floating next to us.

  “I don’t know. How deep do you think that is?” We test the water with Steve’s camera tripod. The river of shit swallows the five-foot tripod with room to spare. We’re not that invested. And so we’re out of options.

  • • •

  It’s hard to leave without knowing for sure if we’ve accomplished our objective, but we can’t very well expect a big sign saying “Welcome to the World’s Oldest Sewer!” While we’re fairly sure we’ve failed to find the main channel of the Cloaca, we wonder if our side tunnel is one of its branches that was closed up over time as the city grew. But even if it isn’t, it’s a fair bet that it’s at least a couple millennia old, host to the kind of history we’ve only read about—a solid find for a morning of traipsing through the sewers. Walking alongside the Tiber back to town, we give a friendly wave to the Gypsies and are honored when we get a slight nod of the head back.

  Steve says: I’d heard about the Cloaca Maxima for so many years. It had this near-mythical status for me, like the Holy Grail. Yes, the real thing existed, but there was still this myth around it. I had done a lot of research on it and was surprised there wasn’t much clarity. It didn’t feel like New York, where the DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] has all the information and just stonewalls you. It felt like nobody really knew. How do you have a three-thousand-year-old tunnel going underneath the most important parts of your city and not know everything about it? It just blows my mind.

  • • •

  That night I go out to dinner with a couple of people from our hostel. Coming back afterward, I find Steve despondent, and minus a good chunk of the bottle of whiskey I’d left him with. “I don’t think we did it,” he tells me. “I don’t think we made it to the Cloaca.”

  We have a limited amount of time for our trip, and I’m not about to go breaking back into the sewers in search of something we may or may not have found already. There’s another option though: pay 500 euros (about $650) to go officially with the Rome Underground society—Roma Sotterranea—the next day.

  Now, while I generally find official tours restrictive and frustrating, I am not above doing it the official way if the risk/reward ratio is sufficiently in its favor. I would have much preferred being able to freely wander the Colosseum by myself, for instance, but instead of trying to hop the fence in the middle of the night, I queued up, got my ticket, and stuck to the beaten path.

  Paying 650 bucks to go into a sewer, however, is ridiculous. But this is the culture of Rome. Different cities have different cultures. In Paris, for instance, people almost always just do things the extralegal way, but it isn’t actually all that “extra.” The police have a relationship with the people who do this stuff. They’re content to play a cat-and-mouse game, with a civil fine being the biggest stick they’ve got. In return, the cataphiles can be counted on to report anything really bad down in the underground: structural dangers, smugglers, or anything else out of the normal course of things.

  New York is different. Tolerance is less—much less. There are several interesting places that, if you are caught there, will most likely result in a night in jail, and there are a few others where there could be considerably worse consequences. But it’s necessary—there’s no other choice. There’s simply no way regular people can get permission for certain things, which leads some people to take the risk of doing them without permission.

  Rome is different from both of these cities. Most of the interesting underground stuff is part of well-guarded archaeological sites, and the local exploration groups are more on the academic side, are heavily cooperative with the authorities, and generally enjoy official access, as opposed to the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that’s prevalent in Paris, and the “Pray you don’t get caught” attitude that exists today in New York.

  Steve is actually considering paying the $650. Finding the Cloaca is a big reason he’s come all the way to Rome, and he is apoplectic over the fact that he might leave without seeing it. Fortunately, I have just the solution for his malaise—a free solution. Walking around the city earlier, I noticed that next to Saint John Lateran—a building most noteworthy for being the official ecclesiastical archbasilica of the bishop of Rome (aka the pope) and, as such, the ecumenical Mother Church of all of Roman Catholicism—there’s a giant obelisk currently surrounded by scaffolding. It looked pretty easy to head in and up, and I know that a good drunken climb can work wonders for the psyche. Plus, Saint John Lateran legally isn’t part of Italy, instead being an exclave of the sovereign Vatican state. I’m betting Steve, as a rebellious lapsed Catholic, won’t be able to turn down the chance to do some extralegal adventuring in an area technically governed by the Holy Father—and right next to his official seat nonetheless.

  Surprisingly, one of the people staying with us at the hostel, an Australian girl named Chi, says she wants to come along. It’s not to climb, it’s just for the walk, she tells us, but I already know she’s heading up top. I recognize her mental state immediately because I’ve experienced it so many times myself. She’s in the process of dealing with appealing things that lie outside her comfort zone. The logical part of herself is telling her that it’s a ridiculous idea to climb up scaffolding in the middle of the night with two random drunk Americans, and is proceeding to come up with all the reasons not to do it. But a spark has been lit, and it is now our job to fan that spark into a flame—a flame strong enough to overcome the mental reservations. Certain things can help with this, booze being not the least of them, but another big one is other confident people around. Ultimately, I know that if we make the situation comfortable enough for her, provide a steady presence, and maybe give her a gentle push when the time is right, she’ll listen to her gut and go with the flow. The three of us swig the last of Steve’s whiskey from the bottle and head southeast to Saint John’s.

  “Who’s cooler, James Bond or Indiana Jones?” Steve asks her as we walk. The correct answer is Indiana Jones. This is one of the questions we ask to determine if we’ve encountered a kindred spirit. James Bond’s only advantage in this argument is that he always got the ladies without having to fight off sadistic Nazis or nihilistic cult leaders first. Other than that, he’s an uneducated thug, a blunt, humorless tool blindly following the orders of an antiquated colonial regime. Indiana Jones, on the other hand, is an intellectual, a professor who pursues his own interests, on his own terms, in the service of knowledge and human understanding. We also both, not so secretly, want to be Indiana Jones.

  “James Bond,” Chi answers without hesitation. This might explain why she has been completely unresponsive to our attempts at flirtation.

  The climb is easy. I go up the scaffolding ladders wi
th Chi while Steve works out his issues by doing a Spider-Man up the side. The scaffolding covers the whole obelisk, and we use the cross at the top of it to boost ourselves up to the final crossbeams. We’ve chosen a great climb. Unbeknownst to us, in the late sixteenth century the city of Rome was actually designed to give us a spectacular view.

  Rome, like most old European cities, is a jumbled mishmash of streets and alleyways that have mostly evolved organically over time. There are a few exceptions, however, like in 1936 when Mussolini carved a grand boulevard called Via della Conciliazione out of the alleyways between the Tiber River and Saint Peter’s Basilica. Another exception occurred 350 years earlier. The pope at the time, Sixtus V, decided that all roads shouldn’t just lead to Rome—they should also lead to the seat of the pope. Sixtus cleared out radial boulevards from Saint John Lateran to link it with the other major basilicas. As a result we have great, unobstructed views right down the main roads of Rome. The Colosseum is down one street, with Saint Peter’s off in the distance behind it. Santa Maria Maggiore is down another. From our perch on the obelisk, we can also make out the dome of the Pantheon and, of course, right next to us, the magnificent roof of the Mother Church of all Christendom.

  The night is misty, and Rome is not heavily lit up at night like Paris or New York. Even if Steve had brought his fancy camera, any decent shots are out of the question. Chi does her best with her regular point-and-shoot digital, mostly photographing the carvings on the obelisk, but I’m perfectly content with nothing. A good climb, a great view, an epic city—I don’t need anything else. Photography is great, but oftentimes it can be a distraction from the experience itself.