Towns & Day Trips

Narni Sotterranea – the underground tour, room by room

A hidden church, a Roman cistern and an Inquisition cell covered in a prisoner’s secret code, under a hill town 30 minutes from the falls. Opening times, prices and how to get a booking.

Photo: Nicholas Gemini, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Facts checked: October 2026, against the official Narni Sotterranea website and FAQ. Times and prices change, so check before you go.

Narni Sotterranea is the best hour and a half in Narni, and it happens underground. Beneath a former Dominican convent there’s a frescoed medieval church, a Roman cistern, the room where the Inquisition questioned its prisoners and a cell whose walls one of them covered in coded symbols. You can only get in on a guided tour, and you can only book that tour by phone. Here’s how it works and what you’ll see, room by room.

A hole in a wall, 1979

The story starts with six young cavers from Narni’s speleological group, UTEC, who in 1979 were exploring under the old convent of San Domenico. They squeezed through a gap in a wall and found themselves in a frescoed room that nobody in living memory had entered. It took another fifteen years to open it to the public: the volunteers of the Associazione Culturale Subterranea, set up in 1994, still run the site and every tour (official site).

What makes the visit unusual is that the research never stopped. The association has spent decades in the archives of the former Holy Office in the Vatican and in the archive of Trinity College Dublin, piecing together who was held here and why. The guides tell that detective story as they walk you through, which is why people leave talking about a prisoner from the 1750s as if they’d met him.

What you see, room by room

1. Under San Domenico

The tour begins in the cellars of the convent complex of Santa Maria Maggiore, better known today as San Domenico because the Dominican friars built it up in the 14th century. A short immersive video in the first room tells the 1979 discovery, which sets the scene well if your Italian is shaky.

2. The hidden church

Next is the room the cavers found: a 13th-century church, known as Santa Maria della Rupe, whose frescoes are among the oldest in Narni. It was originally dedicated to the Archangel Michael, and you can still pick him out on the wall. Under a glass floor are recent archaeological finds, and a virtual reconstruction shows how the space changed over the centuries, from cave chapel to monks’ chapter room to, much later, a cellar.

3. The Roman cistern

Through a gap in the masonry you step into a room built around a Roman cistern, probably part of a private house. This is where the guides talk about Roman water engineering and the Formina aqueduct, which brought water to ancient Narnia through tunnels in the hills; special effects put you “inside” the aqueduct tunnel for a minute.

4. The Room of Torments

A long corridor leads to a large hall where the Inquisition tribunal held its interrogations. The name, Stanza dei Tormenti, isn’t a tour-guide flourish: it’s what the room is called in the documents found in the Vatican archives and at Trinity College Dublin. Regional tourism describes interrogations here between the 16th and 19th centuries (Umbria Tourism).

5. The cell

This is the room people come for. The small cell next to the tribunal is covered in marks scratched into the plaster by the people held there. One prisoner left something more deliberate: a graphic code of alchemical and masonic symbols that, according to the association, still hasn’t been fully deciphered. He was Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini, a corporal of the guards of the Holy Office in Spoleto, arrested and tried in 1759; he used the walls to record his imprisonment and insist on his innocence (Umbria Tourism). The official site has a long essay on what the symbols might mean if you want to go down that particular rabbit hole.

6. The newest finds

Excavations in the rooms above have turned up burials (one of the dead “tells” his own story through another virtual reconstruction), a 12th-century crypt and the apse of the old church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which was Narni’s cathedral in the Byzantine period, with a substantial piece of its 6th-century polychrome mosaic floor (official site). These parts are newer than most guidebooks, so don’t be surprised if your tour includes something the internet doesn’t mention.

Opening times 2026

Source: narnisotterranea.it, checked 9 October 2026. The site’s Italian “festivi” covers Sundays as well as public holidays. Extra departures are added on busy days, and groups can book other times.

Tickets

The official FAQ doesn’t spell out who qualifies for the reduced ticket; an older price list on the same site gave children of 6–11 a reduced rate and under-6s free entry, so ask when you phone. Two things worth knowing: the ticket is valid for a year as a discount card, giving money off NarniAdventures, some Narni restaurants and full-price tickets at other sites on the association’s list, which includes the Marmore Falls; and train travellers with a regional Trenitalia ticket to Narni-Amelia also get a discount.

Booking: the phone-only catch

Every visit must be booked, and the association is blunt about how: by phone on 339 1041645 or 0744 722292, daily 9:00–13:00 and 15:00–18:00. No email, no WhatsApp, no booking through social media. At busy times the line can be engaged for a while, so keep trying, and book at least the day before.

If you don’t speak Italian

Regular tours are in Italian. Scan a QR code and you get a free audioguide on your phone in English, French or German (bring earphones), plus written texts in Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Hungarian, Chinese and Lithuanian. In summer there’s the Friday 14:30 English tour, and groups of 20 or more can book a guided visit in English or Spanish. Honestly, the audioguide works fine: the rooms do most of the talking.

Who it suits, and what to know

• Children: the association says the tour suits adults, children and school groups alike, and pitches the story to the age of the audience.
• Claustrophobia: the rooms are large, with doors and windows. This isn’t a crawl through tunnels.
• Accessibility: on request the rooms can be visited by wheelchair users, blind and deaf visitors. Mention it when you book.
• Dogs: welcome on a lead.
• Photos: not allowed during the visit, but the association lets you download its professional photographs free from the website.
• What to wear: normal clothes; take a layer in summer, when it’s noticeably cooler underground than in the street.

Getting there and parking

The entrance is in the public gardens of San Bernardo behind the former church of San Domenico, next to the Casa del Popolo. The association’s advice, which matches ours: don’t drive into the old town. Park at the Suffragio car park (“Parcheggio centro storico”) off Via Roma, take the lifts up to Via Garibaldi and Piazza dei Priori, and walk about 10 minutes; if it’s full, try the parking on Via Cappuccini Nuovi near the hospital, 15 minutes on foot. By train, Narni-Amelia station is on the Rome–Ancona line, with the Narni Link bus up to the centre. From Marmore Falls or Collestatte allow about 30 minutes by car.

Make a day of it

The tour fills a morning or an afternoon, so pair it with the rest of the town: the Rocca Albornoziana above, the Ghirlandaio in Palazzo Eroli and the ruined Roman Ponte d’Augusto below are all in our Narni guide, along with where to eat. If you’re here in spring, the medieval Corsa all’Anello festival takes over the whole town. For something more physical, the same association runs two other underground experiences: NarniAdventures, an indoor adventure course in the Lacus under Piazza Garibaldi, and caving-style visits through roughly 700 metres of the Roman Formina aqueduct (May to October, Sundays, holidays and the day before, minimum four people, €30 including guide, helmet and insurance; send participants’ details at least 10 days ahead). Then drive back up the Nera valley and finish at Marmore Falls for the evening release.

Frequently asked questions