Galleria Borbonica

Galleria Borbonica tickets: the standard tour or the Via delle Memorie

You can only see the Galleria Borbonica on a guided tour, booked for a date and time. The tunnel has more than one entrance, and the two tours we sell are different routes from different doors, so check which one you’re booking.

The standard tour, at €15, starts at Vico del Grottone 4 and goes down 90 steps for about an hour underground, in English or Italian, which you pick when you book. Be there 15 minutes early; you can cancel or move it until 23:59 the day before. Our ticket is for ages 11 and up, at €10 for ages 11 to 13 and over-75s, with ID.

The Via delle Memorie, at €15, meets at Via Monte di Dio 14, in the Palazzo Serra di Cassano, goes down 100 steps and comes out an hour and a quarter later at Via Morelli 61. Pushchairs can’t come, and you can cancel up to an hour before. In English it runs only with a minimum number of people, so if you’re on your own the standard tour is the safer pick.

The Galleria Borbonica isn’t the Napoli Sotterranea, although its own pages use the name “Napoli sotterranea”: that tour starts from Piazza San Gaetano in the old town and has a page of its own.

Galleria Borbonica opening days and tour times

Wear closed shoes and bring a layer for the tunnel. The association that runs it allows photos on both routes, but ask your guide before you start.

The Galleria Borbonica with the Museum Card or the Museums & Underground Card

With either card the standard tour is included, and you book your place by emailing mail@galleriaborbonica.com and saying you hold the card; Naples Pass and Naples city passes sets them beside the other cards. The 7-day Campania Artecard and the 365 Gold get you 20 per cent off the standard tour; the 365 Lite doesn’t cover the tunnel. The Naples City Card’s underground visit is a choice of the Napoli Sotterranea, the Spanish Quarters or the catacombs, not this tunnel.

What you see on the Galleria Borbonica tour

The standard tour takes you along Renaissance stretches of the Bolla aqueduct, across three bridges and past the walls the Bourbon builders raised over its cisterns.

Further on is the shelter where between 5,000 and 10,000 Neapolitans took cover from the air raids of 1939 to 1945, with objects recovered from those years on show. From the end of the war until 1970 the tunnel was the city’s pound for impounded vehicles and wreckage, and broken statues ended up there too, among them the funerary monument of Aurelio Padovani, founder of the Fascist movement in Naples.

The Via delle Memorie starts above ground, in the courtyard and on the staircase of the Palazzo Serra di Cassano. It then goes down to a small war museum in an old carpentry workshop, through quarries of tuff, the soft volcanic rock under Naples, and past a restored cistern with water in it, and a stretch of the tunnel itself brings you out at Via Morelli. The association says there are no tight spots, so it suits people who don’t like enclosed spaces.

Visitors in wheelchairs and families with pushchairs can see about 60 per cent of the standard route from the Via Morelli 61 entrance, at street level, the only one with step-free access; the tours we sell start from the entrances with stairs.

How the Bourbon Tunnel was dug and left unfinished

Ferdinand II signed the decree on 19 February 1853 and gave the job to the architect Errico Alvino. The tunnel was dug by hand from April 1853 to May 1855, and on 25 May 1855 the king came to see it and had it opened for three days. Only 431 metres were ever dug, starting from the Via Morelli end.

Getting to the Galleria Borbonica from Piazza del Plebiscito

The tunnel runs under the Pizzofalcone hill, between Piazza del Plebiscito and Chiaia. By metro, Chiaia–Monte di Dio on line 6 is the nearest station, 150 metres from Vico del Grottone 4, 200 metres from Via Monte di Dio 14 and 550 metres from Via Morelli 61. From Municipio, on lines 1 and 6, it’s a 10-minute walk, from Toledo 12 minutes and from the Molo Beverello ferry terminal about 16.