While I’m in town, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, one of the antiquarian world’s great wonders, is staging an exhibition titled Parthenope: The Siren and the City. These mythic vapours get the story half right: Greek-speaking colonists settled on and around Megaride, founding a city called Palaeopolis, or old city, before shifting to a new city – Neapolis, later Naples – further along the shore. © Luciano and Marco Pedicini Lying more or less beneath the Mercato dei Vergini in Rione Sanita, 12 metres below ground, is a freshly excavated array of hauntingly beautiful ancient Greek burial chambers that take the visitor time-travelling down, down, down to the city’s earliest foundations in the 4th century BC.