The train is ‘my time machine’: a tour of Naples’ hidden ancient wonders

By Sophia Seymour

A new film about this corner of southern Italy reveals rarely visited villas, seismic landscapes and a ‘civilisation buried mid-sentence’ – all accessible by train O ne by one, the visitors descend through a tight tunnel cut through volcanic rock into the damp foundations of the Teatro Romano buried beneath Herculaneum, with the weight of 2,000 years of city above them. In Below the Clouds, Rosi does not alight there. The train, Rosi says, is “my time machine”.