Narni Underground

The beautiful Narni that can be admired while walking through its narrow streets and alleys with a medieval atmosphere, hides another valuable treasure under its architectural and artistic heritage. "Brought back to light" after a group of young people from Narni discovered it by chance in 1979, this treasure constitutes an extraordinary historical documentation. NARNI SOTTERRANEA is a path through corridors and underground passages - but with different openings to the outside -, following which, accompanied by expert guides, you can discover artifacts and vestiges from different historical periods. The visit,which starts from the convent of San Domenico, is surprising from the very beginning. The small church carved into the rock that you meet first is a precious "piece of art" for its frescoed walls with paintings, now restored, from the 13th-15th centuries including the one with "St. Michael the Archangel who pierces the dragon". In addition, the glass floor of this room allows the eye to get to the ancient foundations resurfaced with the excavations. An opening in the masonry leads to a room where in Roman times a cistern was made from the rock for the collection of rainwater. Crossing a long corridor you find yourself enveloped in an atmosphere full of suspense .. inside what was once the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition; in this room the interrogations of those accused of the crime of heresy took place. The room is also called the Room of Torments for the punishments that were inflicted here with the instruments of torture of which copies are exhibited. It might seem like a perfect film set but in reality it is a tangible piece of history, also told by the graffiti the condemned left in the walls of the small cell where they were locked up. They are messages expressed in codes so as not to be understood by the inquisitors and which, now almost completely deciphered, testify to the dramatic experience undergone.

The route continues in the basement of the Church of Santa Maria in Pensole, where in addition to two Roman cisterns, you can see the structures of the original eighth-century church, above which the Romanesque building was built. The last stop on the itinerary is the large early medieval cistern, called Lacus, located under Piazza Garibaldi

 

 

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