ANISH KAPOOR GOES UNDERGROUND IN NAPLES
22.01.2026 NAPLES & AROUND
The Stazioni d'Arte initiative has come on in leaps and bounds over the intervening decade. The most recent artist-designed metro station to be inaugurated is Monte Sant'Angelo, serving a modern western suburb that hosts several of the city's Federico II University faculties. Opened in September 2025, it's a collaboration between British artist Anish Kapoor and London-based architecture studio AL_A.
Monte Sant'Angelo has been a long time coming. Kapoor received the commission back in 2003, but bureaucracy, funding issues and legal challenges turned construction into a saga lasting more than two decades. Finally, however, Monte Sant'Angelo is ready. And it's a marvel.
The new station is inspired by Naples' deep connection with all that lies under our feet – whether it be volcanic magma, archaeological excavations or Christian catacombs. In Kapoor's words, “In the city of Mount Vesuvius and Dante's mythical entrance to the Inferno, I found it important to try and deal with what it really means to go underground.”
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When the project was first announced, Kapoor gave an interview to The Guardian in which he revealed that “my inspiration as an artist from as early as I can remember has been symbolic architecture… perhaps some of the most deeply, philosophically coherent objects of all time are buildings - not objects, not sculptures”.
During the inauguration ceremony in September last year, Kapoor further expanded on the thinking process behind his work at Monte Sant'Angelo: “It's a mix of sculpture and architecture”, he declared, “that guides travellers on an initiatory voyage into the city's underbelly”. The idea he pursued was, he said, “to turn the tunnel inside out, like a sock”.
Monte Sant'Angelo station has two entrances. One is a bulging oval in rusted Corten, a.k.a. weathering steel, shaped a little like a life jacket collar, open at the end where escalators descend to the tracks and platforms deep underground.
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The other is a looping aluminium structure that resembles a giant inflatable hairpin. The rough cement tunnels inside the station have been left deliberately unfinished and unadorned, to reinforce the impression of a primitive, cavernous descent.
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Among the other Stazioni dell'Arte to make their debut in recent years is Chiaia, a collaboration between architect Uberto Siola and artist/filmmaker Peter Greenaway.
As travellers proceed down a helicoidal ramp, they pass a pantheon of gods given sculptural and pictorial form by Greenway.
Jupiter stands at the highest level. The lowest is dominated by a great underground dome where “Pluto is symbolised by hundreds of eyes monitoring the teeming humanity in the comings and goings of the trains”.
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For more information on the Stazioni d'Arte, see the official Metro Art Napoli website – though at the time of writing this had not been updated to include the new Line 7 stations, including Anish Kapoor's.
Photos of Monte Sant'Angelo Station © Roberto Salomone
Photos of Chiaia Station © Lee Marshall
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