Galleria Borbonica - Ingresso Vico Grottone

This guide to Galleria Borbonica's Vico Grottone entrance in Naples begins with a rusted Fiat parked in the dark, untouched for seventy years. It traces the tunnel back to 1853, when King Ferdinand II of Bourbon, still shaken by the riots of 1848, ordered a private escape route dug from his palace to the barracks above, a project abandoned mid-construction when his dynasty fell. During the Second World War, more than ten thousand bombed-out Neapolitans crowded into this same passage every time the sirens sounded.