Augustan Aqueduct of Serino – Peschici Maresca Palace
The Hidden River of Sanità
Beneath the palaces of Rione Sanità flows a thousand-year-old secret: the Augustan Aqueduct, where Roman engineering meets contemporary art.
Naples is a city that guards its most powerful stories underground. In the vibrant heart of Rione Sanità, beneath the elegant façade of Palazzo Peschici Maresca, lies a place that unites the beginning and the end of time. It is not a simple ruin, but a river of stone that for centuries gave life to the city: the Augustan Aqueduct of Serino.
To descend here is to take a journey into another dimension. You move away from the vibrant sounds of the Vergini market to enter the silence of a monumental space. Suddenly, you find yourself before mighty arches of tuff and brick, perfectly preserved.
This is one of the most impressive works of hydraulic engineering of the Roman Empire, a colossal infrastructure that carried water from Serino all the way to the imperial fleet at Misenum, crossing and nourishing ancient Neapolis.
But this place is not just archaeology. It is a story of stratification. Those same arches, forgotten and buried for centuries, became the foundations for the palace above, and then a cellar, a storage depot, and even an air-raid shelter to protect lives during the war.
Today, thanks to passionate restoration work, this space has been reborn. The Augustan Aqueduct has become a place of living culture, a unique setting where archaeology dialogues with contemporary art. Installations, performances, and exhibitions find a home among the ancient walls, creating an electrifying connection: it is the discovery that in Naples, the creativity of the present literally flows through the veins of its most ancient past.
INFO
ADDRESS: Via Arena della Sanità, 5, 80137 Napoli NA
