There is a place in Umbria, submerged in the ancient belly of Narni, where a secret heart beats: a passageway between two universes where time has stopped. Or perhaps, it has simply become something else. A gateway between what is real and what, though invisible, vibrates with deeper truths. This place is Narni Underground—not a mere network of tunnels and stones, but a corridor of the soul. A spiral that descends and rises again in the perpetual motion of the spirit of a mystical place, where two figures chase each other like eternal archetypes: Roberto Nini, the researcher, and Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini, the initiate.

The journey begins in full daylight, among the stone alleys of Narni. The sun filters across medieval rooftops, caresses the battlements, and whispers between the ancient arches. But something deeper calls from below. It is an ancient summons, the hidden heartbeat of the city, its precious and profound core. To descend into Narni Underground is not a tourist act, but a rite of passage into the labyrinths of one’s own essence.

Roberto Nini did not know, when as a boy he climbed curiously among ruins and forgotten wells, that this call was not fantasy but destiny. Driven by the sacred fire of “divine madness,” together with five fellow speleologists from UTEC, he decided to discover what lay beyond a small hole in the wall of a garden behind the convent of San Domenico. Just a crack, nothing more. He did not yet know that, just beyond that fissure, another world was waiting.

It was 1979, the year of the discovery, when the figures of two men brushed against each other across the thresholds of time: Roberto Nini and Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini. Perhaps two sides of the same mirror.

There, beneath centuries of silence, a medieval rupestrian church revealed itself to their eyes like a secret offered only to the daring. The air smelled of earth and mystery when, in the penumbra, a face appeared—a fresco of Saint Michael the Archangel, standing on the wall as if to guard the fragile boundary between the visible and the invisible. Further on, beyond the church, they discovered chambers, tunnels, until reaching the Chamber of Torments, where the Inquisition Tribunal interrogated and tortured between the 17th and 18th centuries, following post-Council of Trent norms. Continuing, the researchers found a large Roman cistern, part of the hydraulic network fed by the Formina aqueduct, a masterpiece of engineering that once allowed ancient Narnia to thrive.

It is no coincidence that Saint Michael the Archangel was present, the chosen angel to guard miraculous water sources. He is not merely a painted figure; his presence evokes ancient symbolism linked to the water flowing nearby, hidden in the rock’s depths. Water that, in esoteric tradition, represents purification, rebirth, and healing of the soul. And who, if not the Archangel Michael, could guard these waters, their invisible forces, and the secret pathways connecting earth to the divine? In this weave of sacred and profane, of faith and symbol, Narni Underground reveals its true essence: a place where spirituality intertwines with history, where water, like Michael himself, becomes guide and keeper of the mystery.

From that day, Roberto Nini was no longer just a curious boy. He became the custodian of a buried world, the bearer of the torch. They call him archaeologist, historian, adventurer, writer. But within, he is something else: a pilgrim of time, a seeker of the sacred fire of Truth.

Every stone here is a story,” Roberto Nini says, “but one must listen with the heart. Only then does history cease to be dead and return alive, like a flame beneath the ashes.

It was his heart that led him beyond that church, into a small hidden room. A narrow, low doorway opened into a bare cell with whitewashed walls. Yet something vibrated in the air. An echo. A whisper. Here lived, in captivity, Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini, corporal of the guards of the Holy Office of Spoleto, later accused, betrayed, and imprisoned. The year was 1759, but what happened then is still wrapped in a veil denser than history itself. For Giuseppe was not only a prisoner. He was an initiate. A visionary. Perhaps an alchemist, perhaps a Freemason—or perhaps simply a soul capable of seeing beyond the veil.

Using shards and nails, Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini left on his cell walls a book of symbols: crosses, labyrinths, eyes, numbers, cabalistic letters, the Sun and the Moon, the Tree of Life. A cryptic language intended for the few who can read with the Wisdom of the heart. During his long months of captivity, he carved his silent cry into the stone: of truth, of freedom, of hidden knowledge that no prison could contain.

A “passage between worlds,” to cross the Chamber of Torments is to enter a liquid dream. The walls seem to breathe, silence has weight. Visitors walk slowly, as if in a sacred place, but something seems to watch them. It is not fear—it is reverence. It is the deep sense that in this place, one is never alone.

Every mark carved by Lombardini is a portal. Every detail reveals an invisible map of the soul. Some leave moved, others unsettled. Many say they feel something beyond words, but no one leaves indifferent,” Roberto recounts. “The first time I saw those symbols, I didn’t understand. But I felt them. It was as if another intelligence spoke from beyond time. In that moment, I knew my task was only to be the bridge.

Through painstaking research across the Vatican Archives, Trinity College in Dublin, and various Italian repositories, Roberto Nini was able to reconstruct Lombardini’s story. His meticulous archival work was not a mere complement to the underground discoveries—it was the key that gave meaning to those graffiti, transforming them from mysterious marks into tangible proof of an Inquisition active in Narni until Italian unification. Only through special permissions, effort, and favorable “coincidences” did he manage to uncover names, dates, interrogation records, and even an identikit of the fugitive, comparing 18th-century investigative techniques with modern methods.

Not only a researcher, Roberto Nini is also the author of several books recounting the enigmas and revelations of Narni Underground and Lombardini’s figure. Yet in his drawer lies an even more ambitious project: to create a film or TV series inspired by the life and courage of Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini—“The Chosen One.” The intent is not only artistic or educational but a profound tribute to a figure forgotten by official history, a way to revive through screen the values of memory, truth, and freedom.

Nini’s passionate research has illuminated a truth hidden for centuries: without historical documents, Lombardini would have remained only a shadow on a wall. Instead, his story becomes alive, concrete, thanks to the determination of a researcher who did not settle for digging in the dark.

Nini and Lombardini never met in this timeline. Yet a fil rouge binds them: one in the darkness of imprisonment, the other in the light of discovery. One carving, the other narrating. One prisoner, the other liberator. It is an inner paso doble: the struggle and the embrace, the resistance and the revelation. Narni Underground is the “Middle Kingdom,” its walls the theater of this ancient dance, written in silences and surges.

There is something about Narni that escapes logic. Its origins are ancient and fascinating, deeply tied to the land, to pre-Roman peoples, and to the spirituality that still hovers there. The term Nar has Semitic roots: הָרָ (nh-r), in Biblical Hebrew “nāhār” means “flowing water,” “rushing river,” or “sacred river.”

Narnia was not just a geographic name: for Romans and earlier peoples, the Nar River was sacred. Its clear, cold waters ran through gorges and caves, charged with mystery. This link between place and natural sacredness has, over centuries, built around Narni a unique aura, at the border between real and mythical.

Narni Underground is not only a “place beneath the city”—it is within each of us. It is that part of the soul we have buried: mysterious, ancestral, frightening, and beautiful. To enter it is to undertake an inner journey, guided by two extraordinary presences: the burning fire of Roberto and the luminous shadow of Giuseppe.

At the end of the path, one rises again. The sun warms the face once more. But something has changed. Inside. Whoever has walked those corridors listening to those ancient calls is no longer the same. They have seen what is hidden, felt what is unspoken, touched a time that has never passed.

Listening carefully, one can hear their voices intertwine. Roberto’s, narrating with passion: “These places do not belong only to the past. They are alive. They speak to those who seek, to those who dare to descend into the depths.” And Giuseppe’s, softer: “Welcome home.”

In a world that forgets, Narni Underground remembers. In a time that runs, Narni Underground holds. In an age of surfaces, it digs. And those who enter may not simply be visiting a place—they may truly be returning home.

This article was translated by Sian Samantha Maguire.

Notes

1 Scopri Narni Sotterranea.