Italy’s Dark Heart
Travel Stories: In the Umbrian hilltown of Narni, Jeff Biggers stands face to face with 2,000 years of grim history
My main interest in Narni, though, was not on its surface; I wanted to explore its infamous underground: Narni subterranea. I met my guide, Roberto Nini, after lunch. He was a wiry, energetic man in his early 40s who carried out some cryptic day job in order to maintain his passion and dedication to the city. One of the founders of the Narni Subterranea Foundation, Nini, along with a brigade of rambunctious friends, had made one of the most important discoveries in the region over 20 years ago. Active spelunkers and adventurers, they had cajoled a local farmer near the San Domenico monastery into letting them descend into a hole on the hillside of the town. The farmer, in fact, had hinted at some mysterious chapel below. Earlier in the century, Narni had suffered an earthquake, which had inadvertently exposed some of the hillside caves.
Nini and his friends, though, descended into another reality, far beyond any water system. They tumbled first into a secret chapel, directly under the monastery. Dating back to the 12th century, the chapel still maintained nearly perfect acoustics; standing before the back wall, you merely had to hum a few bars of music to realize how wonderfully balanced the sound resonated in the chambers. The remains of nearly 900-year-old frescoes of San Michael the Archangel and the “deposed Christ” were intact. Heading deeper into the cave, taking days to remove the rubble that had collapsed from the earthquake, the young adventurers discovered an ancient Roman cistern and the remains of a Roman house. Then they arrived at a wall that had clearly been sealed.
After a long discussion, Nini’s group decided to smash the blocked wall. Crawling through the space, they entered one of the last torture chambers from the Inquisition. Along with finding a plethora of torture instruments, including the ghastly stretching rack, they pushed into another room, discovering the cell of the prisoners. The entire walls and ceilings were covered in graffiti, much of which had been written in code. Nini’s group eventually found a trap door that led directly to the sanctuary of the San Domenico church.
No bigger than six feet by six feet, the cell was an oppressive chamber. The graffiti riddled the walls with the scrawl of desperation, ostensibly etched by fingernails. Contrary to the common perceptions about the Inquisition—that it lasted only a brief period during the Dark Ages—Nini’s group decoded part of the graffiti that dated back to 1759. Symbols of doves (Jesuits), attempting to survive the interrogations of hawks (largely those in the Dominican order who had been given the task if carrying out the Inquisition) had been mixed with Bible verses, dates, designs.
According to Nini, it would have been easy to cover up the discovery and dismiss the whole event as a great adventure. Instead, he and his group of supporters had worked with the monastery and town officials over the past 20 years, largely on a shoe-string budget, to develop the underground chambers into a living reminder of their country’s dark history and the town’s local complicity. Nini was currently in the process of culling through the dark chambers of archives for documents related to the Inquisition. To literally uncover the dark heart of Italy’s past.
I left Narni that evening on the train impressed and buoyed by the town and Nini’s relentlessness. The unveiled secrets of the underground. On the train seat I picked up a discarded copy of La Stampa newspaper and read the headlines about the controversial immunity law and ensuing bribery trial. I threw the paper back onto the seat within minutes. Just old news in this country.
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