Napoli Greca

September 21, 2006

Naples proper was founded by Greek colonists, probably from the island of Euboea, sometime around 500 B.C.

The Greeks had actually been in the Gulf of Naples for centuries before that, having established a trading colony on the island of Ischia and a settlement at Cumae a couple of hundred years earlier. Before the Greeks arrived, the area was populated by Latin tribes -- notably, Oscans and Samnites -- and settlements of Etruscans from the Italian north. By the time Naples was absorbed into the Roman state, in the third century B.C., it had grown to 30,000 people and was the undisputed capital of the South of Italy.

Photos below are of the Greek city walls as seen in the Piazza Bellini here in Naples.

These big blocks of stone were uncovered when power lines were being installed below the street level in the old city of Naples in the 1950s. Who knows how many centuries they were underground. A brochure that I picked up from the municipal tourism office says that the city walls were put in place in the 4th century B.C., which would make them roughly 2,300 years old.

The large Greek letter chi visible in the photo above is marking that was put on the stone when it was quarried all of those centuries ago. Other blocks that I could see had other Greek letters on them, for example, the letter epsilon, etc.

Cool stuff.

-- Aaron