Time Travel in Naples’ Subterranean Depths and Volcanic Shadows.

Beneath the vibrant, chaotic surface of modern Herculaneum lies a silent, subterranean world, a poignant echo of a civilisation abruptly halted 2,000 years ago. Visitors to the Teatro Romano descend one by one, navigating a tight tunnel carved through the very volcanic rock that both preserved and entombed this ancient city. The air grows cool and damp, a stark contrast to the Mediterranean sun above, as they venture into the foundations of a Roman theatre, buried deep beneath the weight of millennia. In this pitch-black descent, illuminated only by torchlight, the guide’s words resonate with profound truth: "This is a time machine, and we are going back." As the beam of light catches the transparent waterproof capes worn by the tourists, filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi’s camera transforms them into spectral figures, ephemeral ghosts traversing the boundary between past and present, a haunting visual that sets the tone for his remarkable documentary, Pompei: Below the Clouds.

Released this March on the streaming platform Mubi, Rosi’s film is not merely a historical survey but a profound, meditative journey that deftly threads the needle from classical antiquity to the present day. Rendered in ashen black and white, Below the Clouds eschews conventional narration and interviews, opting instead for an immersive, observational approach. It places the viewer directly within the deeply stratified region surrounding Naples, inviting contemplation on each scene as a unique nexus of place and moment in the area’s long, tumultuous history. Rosi, a Palme d’Or winner and a master of unadorned cinematic realism, uses his characteristic style to allow the landscape and its inhabitants to speak for themselves, crafting a narrative that is felt rather than told, a method perfectly suited to the profound silence and enduring presence of the past in this volcanic land.

Naples, known to the ancient Greeks as Neapolis, or "the new city," stands as one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited urban centres, a testament to human resilience in a volatile environment. Yet, many who visit this sprawling metropolis experience only a fleeting glimpse before being drawn to the more famous archaeological sites. The traditional tourist pilgrimage often involves boarding the Circumvesuviana at Porta Nolana, a narrow-gauge railway that ferries passengers east towards the renowned ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Rosi, however, takes a different path in Below the Clouds. He remains on the train, his camera serving as his "time machine," capturing the nuances of a seismic landscape that stretches from the dramatic Sorrentine peninsula, crowned by the ever-present Vesuvius, to the less-known, yet equally formidable, craters of the Phlegraean Fields in the west. His lens reveals a Naples and its surrounding territories that most visitors never truly see, a lived-in tapestry woven with threads of deep history and constant geological threat.

As a filmmaker myself, who has been fortunate enough to live and work in Naples for the past 15 years, Rosi’s unique perspective in Below the Clouds served as a powerful inspiration. It prompted me to embark on my own pilgrimage, to board those often overcrowded and noisy Circumvesuviana trains that I typically avoid, seeking to experience the region through his meditative gaze. My journey echoed his, delving into the layers of time embedded in the very fabric of the landscape.

The Circumvesuviana’s eastward trajectory offers more than just a direct route to Pompeii. It skirts the Bay of Naples, passing through a succession of often-overlooked towns, each a living museum of historical stratification. In Torre Annunziata, for instance, Rosi’s camera lingers on the visible layers of the town’s history: ancient Roman brickwork, meticulously cut in a distinctive diamond pattern from nearby volcanic quarries, stands alongside elegant Doric columns from an excavated Roman villa, all surmounted by mid-20th-century housing blocks where life continues unabated. This visual layering is a potent reminder of the continuous human presence here.

The Roman villa in question, Villa Oplontis, is indeed a site worth pausing for. Believed to have been the opulent residence of Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of Emperor Nero, its grandeur and exceptional preservation are breathtaking. Unlike the more extensively excavated but often weathered structures of Pompeii, Villa Oplontis feels like a secret discovery. Its vibrant frescoes, depicting mythological scenes, architectural illusions, and lush gardens, remain almost untouched by time, their colours astonishingly vivid. The villa’s extensive colonnade stands pristine, and on any given day, one is likely to find scarcely another soul in sight, allowing for an intimate connection with the past, a profound sense of stepping directly into a Roman noble’s life. The villa’s exquisite design, including a grand swimming pool and private baths, highlights the sophisticated luxury enjoyed by the Roman elite, a stark contrast to the dramatic fate that would befall the region.

Continuing east on the Circumvesuviana, my journey, like Rosi’s, led me to Somma Vesuviana. Here, a dedicated team from the University of Tokyo has been meticulously excavating for decades, slowly uncovering the remains of the Villa Augustea. This imperial estate is widely believed to be the place where Emperor Augustus, the first Roman Emperor and architect of the Pax Romana, drew his last breath in AD 14. This site offers a crucial historical distinction: it was not the infamous eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 that buried this grand villa, but a later, equally devastating eruption in AD 472. This fact underscores the persistent and recurring geological threat faced by the inhabitants of this region throughout history. The sheer abundance of archaeological treasures still buried beneath the volcanic earth across the region unfortunately fuels a clandestine economy; tomb raiders have long burrowed into the soft, easily workable volcanic stone, seeking ancient loot to sell on illicit markets, a constant battle for preservationists.

Switching directions, a second train line, the Cumana, departs from Montesanto station in central Naples and heads west. A mere 25-minute journey brings one to Pozzuoli, a bustling port city of 75,000 people. This vibrant community lives quite literally within the basin of one of the world’s most geologically active calderas: the Phlegraean Fields. For centuries, the dramatic presence of Vesuvius has overshadowed the subtle, yet potentially far more dangerous, rumblings beneath Pozzuoli. The Phlegraean Fields represent a vast, sprawling supervolcano, its activity manifested not in a single conical peak, but in numerous craters, fumaroles, and areas of intense seismic movement.

Stepping off the train at Pozzuoli, the pungent, unmistakable scent of sulphuric smoke drifting over the port immediately announced the raw geological power beneath. I had strategically timed my arrival for a simple, authentic lunch at Abbascio ‘U Mare, a local favourite celebrated for serving fish landed fresh from the boats that very morning, a taste of the sea directly linked to the earth’s bounty. Afterwards, I visited the Macellum of Pozzuoli, a 2nd-century Roman market situated near the harbour. This site offers one of the clearest and most compelling records of a fascinating geological phenomenon known as bradyseism. Bradyseism refers to the cyclical uplifting and lowering of the Earth’s surface due to the movement of magmatic fluid and gas beneath. At the Macellum, halfway up the ancient columns, distinct bands of small holes in the stone provide undeniable evidence. These holes were bored by marine molluscs when the columns, and indeed the entire market, once stood several metres below the bay’s surface, only to be slowly raised again over centuries. Rosi’s documentary beautifully captures this phenomenon, extending his camera’s gaze underwater, descending into the submerged ruins of nearby Baia, a Roman luxury resort now largely swallowed by the sea. Here, robed marble figures stand upright on the seabed, serene and ghostly, as shoals of fish drift over intricate mosaics and weave between their feet, a stunning visual metaphor for the relentless dance between human ambition and natural forces.

At the geographical and historical intersection of the Circumvesuviana and Cumana lines lies Naples itself. Known to the Greco-Romans as Neapolis, "the new town," it was considered contemporary when compared to the established cities of Pompeii and Baia. In the heart of the city, at the magnificent Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN), Rosi’s film delves into another layer of memory. He films Maria, one of the museum’s archaeologists, deep within the vast storage vaults. This is what Rosi aptly terms the casaforte, "the safe of memory" – an astonishing sight of shelf upon shelf laden with fragmented marble torsos, disembodied legs, and countless busts, the overflowing bounty of two millennia of relentless excavation. These artefacts, Maria explains, reside here, patiently awaiting their "turn" to return to the museum floor above, a powerful reflection, Rosi suggests to me when we speak, of society’s own hierarchies and selective memory. Like Rosi, I am utterly captivated by these perfectly formed marble figures, these silent survivors of catastrophe, which populate the galleries upstairs alongside exquisite frescoes and delicate bronzes, all pulled from the same volcanic earth that tragically buried thousands under Vesuvius.

Rosi’s artistic juxtaposition extends further, placing these classical marble torsos alongside images of dismembered ex-votos, small metal plates shaped like individual body parts. These are offerings, often left in churches or at street shrines, accompanied by fervent prayers to saints in exchange for bodily cures or miraculous interventions. This practice, deeply embedded in Neapolitan culture, bridges ancient beliefs with contemporary faith. At the small church of Santa Maria Francesca delle Cinque Piaghe in the Quartieri Spagnoli, one of my favourite, most authentic corners of the city, hundreds of these ex-votos in the shape of pregnant women have been left, testament to the saint’s powerful association with fertility. These enduring practices speak volumes about the quintessential Neapolitan impulse to marry the sacred and the profane, to find divine intervention in the most earthly of concerns, a continuation of ancient votive traditions adapted to Christian faith.

Rosi’s profound film culminates in an abandoned cinema, somewhere along the Circumvesuviana train line. Its seats are long destroyed, its screen partly intact, a ruin within a city built on ruins, above a city that was itself once buried. Into this decaying space, Rosi projects clips from Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy, a seminal 1954 neorealist film that explores themes of the past, memory, and the disintegration of a relationship against the backdrop of Pompeii and Naples. This cinematic act – a film about the past, playing in a ruin, in a city perpetually layered by destruction and rebirth – evokes the mythical Chronovisor, a purported 1950s invention said to broadcast actual historical events. The cinema, in this context, becomes a place where the present tense seamlessly merges into the past, even as you watch it unfold, a perfect metaphor for Naples itself.

By the end of Pompei: Below the Clouds‘ nearly two-hour runtime, the viewer has undergone a journey mirroring that of the visitors descending into the ancient foundations of Herculaneum’s Teatro Romano. It is a profound immersion into a civilisation buried mid-sentence, a confrontation with the fragility of existence and the relentless march of time. Yet, Rosi’s film insists that this confrontation with history and catastrophe does not require a museum ticket or an archaeological excavation. "We are already living inside the catastrophe," Rosi states, a sobering reminder that the geological forces and historical echoes are not distant past events, but active, shaping presences in the daily life of this extraordinary region. It is a call to recognise the layers of history, the constant threat and beauty, that define Naples and its surrounding landscape, a testament to human endurance and the timeless power of place.

Pompei: Below the Clouds is available on Mubi. Herculaneum, Pompeii, Villa Oplontis, and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli are open to visitors. The Circumvesuviana runs from Napoli Porta Nolana east to Pompeii and Herculaneum. The Cumana line runs from Montesanto station west to Pozzuoli. Sophia Seymour offers bespoke city walks and itineraries through Looking for Lila.