The Undergrounds

Our journey starts under St. Dominic's monastery area, the entrance is in a XIIth century church, discovered just 20 years ago. This church still preserves some of the most ancient frescos of the city. Through  a passage in the masonry we enter into a large room with a roman cistern, which is probably the remains of a roman house, a "domus".

Then, through a long narrow passage, we reach a large dark room which was the Tribunal of the Inquisition, where the accused heretics were put on trial. Several documents, discovered in the municipal archives, and the traces left on the masonry by the torture instruments , prove the existence of these trials.

A little cell, unique in this way in Italy, gives evidence, through graffiti on its wall, of the pain suffered by those who were imprisoned there to be put on trial. One of them left a message in a graphic code that still isn't  completely decoded.

A photogaphic exibition shows the instruments used by the Tribunal to extort confessions from those accused of heresy. Our visit continues in  the underground of Santa Maria Impensole's church. We can see here some roman structures and 2 cisterns, in fact the 8^th century church was built on top of a roman house, and the romanic church was built on top of the more ancient church.

The tour of "Narni Underground" ends in the big cistern of the medieval "Lacus", under Garibaldi Square.