Crypta Neapolitana and the Tomb of Virgil

Neapel · Italy · Tunnel

Virgil dug the tunnel in a single night by magic, Naples says. His ashes are meant to lie in the tomb above the mouth.

The Roman tunnel through the Posillipo hill runs some seven hundred metres and was cut in the first century BC. From at least the 1100s Naples venerated not Virgil the poet but Virgil the magician, protector of the city, and the Cronaca di Partenope lists his magical works. One of them is this passage: he is said to have opened the mountain in a single night with incantations. The belief ran so deep that King Robert of Anjou put the question jokingly to Petrarch, who answered just as drily that he had never read that Virgil was a stonecutter. Above the mouth stands a Roman columbarium venerated since the Middle Ages as the poet's tomb; the laurel at the entrance was said never to wither. The tunnel had a reputation for spirits, and people prayed their way through it.

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Where is Crypta Neapolitana and the Tomb of Virgil located?

Crypta Neapolitana and the Tomb of Virgil is in Neapel, Italy.

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