The palimpsest nature
of urban Naples has been made even more evident by
the recent discovery (January 2004) of the ancient port
of Roman Naples. They have always known it was down
there somewhere. It was just about where reconstructions
of the city as it was during the first century a.d. had
presumed it to be, right beneath what is now Piazza Municipio (photo),
adjacent to the Angevin Fortress, the Maschio Angioino, 100 yards or
so in from the modern coastline and way down beneath the
man-made landfill and rubble of 2000 years of history
and the natural accumulation of 2000 years of mudslides
and other geology.
Construction
for the Piazza Municipio station of the new underground
train line had already unearthed more recent items, bits
of structures that were plowed under in the 1890s to
rebuild the square; then they found the old (meaning 400
years) outer walls of the nearby fortress. Now, beneath
all that, archaeologists have brought to light a 30–foot
Roman vessel and abundant pottery, sure signs that this
was the Roman port. The expectation had been that they
would find something sooner or later as the subway
builders continued to dig and move east along the line of
the old Roman (and Greek) wall. The next station down the
line at Piazza Nicola Amore, still under construction, has
now yielded the remains of an impressive imperial villa,
the site of the Roman Isolympic
Games.
Obviously,
there is much left to be uncovered. This leaves
archaeologists ecstatic; people who have to get to and
from work, however, have mixed feelings. They are
already impatient with subway construction that is
months, even years, behind schedule. Workers doing the
actual building of the new train line are also uncertain
about this turn of events; whenever history and the
needs of the modern city come into conflict, as they do
quite often in Naples, those who dig and build generally
have to stand aside and lean on the their shovels until
the archaeologists get finished mumbling and cataloging.
In the case of a 30-foot wooden boat that has to be
delicately excavated, at least some workers may be sent
home —laid off— for a while.